Railroads
and Manifest Destiny. [Also see "American Progress," painting
by John Gast, 1872.]
It is a cliche that railroads made America, and historians point to
the Pacific Railroad of 1869 and its effect of binding the Pacific
and Atlantic states. However, it recently occurred to me that the
railroad truly made America in a deeper and more profound way.
What first came to my attention with the effect of a light bulb
switched on were the relative dates for two key events: Asa
Whitney [first] submitted his plan for a Pacific railroad to Congress (through
his
representatives) in January 1845. The term "Manifest
Destiny" did not
first [appear] in print until six months later (erroneously
attributed* to John
L. Sullivan) – in an essay
about
Texas, but with reference to "the
railroad".

["... the fulfilment of our manifest
destiny to overspread the continent
allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying
millions. ... there
can be no doubt that the population
now fast streaming down upon California will both assert and maintain
that independence. Whether they will
then attach themselves to our Union or
not, is not to be predicted with any certainty. Unless the projected rail-road across the continent to the Pacific be
carried into effect, perhaps they may
not; though even in that case, the day
is not distant when the Empires of the
Atlantic and Pacific would again flow
together into one, as soon as their inland
border should approach each other.
But that great work, colossal as appears the plan on its first suggestion,
cannot remain long unbuilt. Its necessity for this very purpose of binding
and holding together in its iron clasp our
fast settling Pacific region with that of
the Mississippi valley—the natural facility of the route—the ease with which
any amount of labor for the construction can be drawn in from the over-crowded
populations of Europe, to be paid in the lands made valuable by the
progress of the work itself—and its immense utility to the commerce of the
world with the whole eastern coast of
Asia, alone almost sufficient for the
support of such a road ... ""Annexation" The
United States Democratic review. Volume 17(85):5-10, J.& H.G. Langley,
New York,
July, 1845. (unsigned
editorial)]

It occurred to me that the very existence of railroad technology –
even before actual construction – inspired westward expansion by
promising a means of binding new territory to the Union. (The
telegraph has to be part of it.)
It is very difficult to asign motive to anyone, but I am convinced
that there was essentially no interest in western expansion at the
time of the Louisiana
Purchase. The negotiations were only for New
Orleans and west Florida. The French threw in that country west of
the Mississippi at the last hour. But by 1843 when settlers began
moving to Oregon by the wagonload, this clearly had changed. (Texas
fits in here, too, but there seems to have been a mixed bag of
expectations – whether it was really American expansion, or merely
emigration).
It does make me wonder how much – if any – a role did the desire
to
secure optional railroad routes for a Pacific railroad play in the
Mexican War. Whitney's route was Great Lakes to Columbia River via
South Pass – the only pass then believed practical then within the
territory of the United States.
Anyway, does this notion that the mere potential of the railroad
opened [or played a previously unrecognized role in opening] the
frontier deserve more research?
... we see a similar pattern
in our own day. No sooner is the internet "invented" than people
begin to imagine that the internet will do away with libraries, and
the telephone, and yield all other kinds of marvelous things. That is
the kind of thing I'm wondering about in regard to railroads. We –
railroad historians – spend a lot of time recording the development of
particular technological features and the construction of miles of
track, but what about the expectations that railroads inspired? and
how were those expectations manifest in daily living (manifest by
people who had never seen a train)?
There is a story – perhaps more myth than true – that Leland Stanford
told his seasick wife on their way to California that he would build
her a railroad for her return journey. I wonder if people really went
to California thinking they could ride a train home someday. (Indeed,
many did just that, whether they imagined it would happen or not.)*Linda
Hudson, "Mistress
of Manifest Destiny: a biography of Jane McManus Storm Cazneau 1807-1878)" Austin:
Texas State Historical Association, 2001, makes a strong case [based on statistical
analysis of the writing styles of O'Sullivan and McManus using signed articles
by each of them for comparison] that Jane
McManus [a staff writer for John L. O'Sullivan, editor of the United States
Magazine
and Democratic Review, aka Cora Montgomery] was the real author of that
editorial – as well as others. (McManus was
from Troy, NY, likely a Mahican Indian, and likely,
too, a one-time mistress of Aaron Burr.)
—Wendell Huffman, 9/24/2004 [in part from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]Currier & Ives: American Railroad Scene: Lightning Express
Trains Leaving
the Junction. Courtesy of Vanessa
Rudisill Stern. Above, right.

It goes much deeper. The first voyages of discovery (on land after the
[Louisiana] Purchase & Lewis
& Clark) were made for the purpose of locating
railroad and other transportation routes. Fremont, is one example, another is
the
Southern route. A good deal of political
wrangling and compromise – and
dead ends attended the railroad discussions. It is not coincidence that
the railroad was approved after the Civil War started – the South was
holding out for the Southern route – and held up all others.
I don't think that the Mexican War was not railroad route related – but
do
think that the Gadsden
purchasewas, even though it was one of the
odder purchases made. Certainly the railroad surveys opened much of the West
and
much of the subsequent history is based on them. From Hayden and Gunnison,
Fremont, and others – the
role these surveys played in no small part kept the thought of the West in the
mind of the country, especially when
partnered with the discovery of mineral wealth. —Bob Webber [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

... Sometimes possibilies inspire and motivate people much
more than realities.
And we know that Southern Pacific's southwest route across the
continent required the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. ... —Stuart A. Forsyth [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

... In 1845, the railroad had
been around for some 17-18 years, and those in the
position to make a term like "manifest destiny"
become a common term certainly would have been
thinking about the potential the railroad
provided. ... —Schuyler G. Larrabee [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

... a rather intriguing thought. While I'm not sure that
desired railroad routes played much of a roll in the US starting the Mexican
War (although it is probably worth looking into a little further), we of course
know
that the Gadsden Purchase (which became the southern parts of Arizona and New
Mexico) was specifically railroad inspired.
It seems to me I have seen articles on transcontinental railroads as early as
1839, to Oregon, (in the Democratic Review, as I recall ... Among other
things, the Democratic Review published writings by the Existentialists grouped
around Emerson. ...). I seem to recall
Manifest Destiny showing up there, too, but I'd have to dig to find the date
(it's been nearly 20 years since I wandered through those pages). It seems
to
me that the initial "use" of Manifest Destiny was in a sentence that
included
both words, but not in a unified phrase.

[" ... In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many
nations is destined to manifest to
mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest
temple ever dedicated to the
worship of
the Most High – the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere – its
roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens, and its congregation an Union
of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions, calling, owning
no man master, but governed by God's natural and moral law of equality, the
law
of brotherhood – of "peace and good will amongst men.". .
.
Yes, we are the nation of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement.
Equality of rights is the cynosure of our union of States, the grand exemplar
of the correlative equality of individuals; and while truth sheds its effulgence,
we cannot retrograde, without dissolving the one and subverting the other.
We must onward to the fulfilment of our mission – to the entire development
of the principle of our organization – freedom of conscience, freedom
of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits, universality of freedom
and equality.
This is our high destiny, and in nature's eternal, inevitable decree of cause
and effect we must accomplish it. ... ""The
Great Nation of Futurity," The
United States Democratic Review,
6(23):426-430,
1839.]

Subsequently (but not all that long
after) someone welded them into a phrase.
As to idea that the mere potential that the railroad opened the frontier, we
certainly know that settlement patterns West of, say, the Missouri River
were
very different from the earlier settlement patterns West of the Alleghenies.
And I think the railroads played an important roll in bringing about the
new
pattern (along with the occasional precious metal mining frenzy). ... —Kyle
Williams Wyatt,
Curator of History & Technology,
California State Railroad Museum [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

The role was considerable as the U.S. failed to secure the southern route
across New Mexico and Arizona by invasion and a treaty fouled by a faulty
survey.
So, instead of just taking the territory by force of arms, which we thought
we already had done, we bought it a few years later through the Gadsden
Purchase.
I doubt Lewis & Clark suffered from railroad fever, but one of my relatives
born at that time (1806) certainly did. He would have been aware of the
Granite
Railway in Massachusetts (1826) and rode the Allegheny
Portage Railroad in 1835 when he emigrated to the Illinois country newly opened (i.e. cleared
of
Blackhawk et. al.) for settlement. I suspect his primary goal was capital
accumulation, and railroads would have been part of his thinking although surviving
records are moot on that point in choosing a homestead. Regardless he
quickly became a railroad booster agitating for a branch from the Galena
& Chicago Union (chartered 1836). When that failed, he and others formed a paper
railroad early in the 1850s leading to a real railroad after the Civil War.
His story is not unique and in it's broadest terms was quite common.
I would think that at some point ... the public
consciousness was so infused with railroad fever that separating it from
Manifest Destiny would be difficult. The two were well-established and feeding
off each other by the time Manifest Destiny got its name and Asa Whitney
proposed his transcontinental railroad (1845). And don't forget a couple of
important technological precursors: advances in steamboat technology turning
the
Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio Rivers into a trade and emigration arteries
(starting in 1811) and canal fever spurred by the success of the Erie
Canal (chartered
1817, opened 1825). ...
—Bill Diven [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

Stereograph Viewing.
When I was a kid, my dad who was a physician showed me one fascinating way
to view stereographic images [a pair of pictures that simulate the distance
between your two eyes]. The
examples we used were three-dimensional depictions of molecules, but it works
with
any
stereo
image.
You cross your eyes while staring at a spot between the two images, then while
still crossing, let your eyes relax a bit until a third image begins to emerge
between the two. Your brain does the rest. Suddenly, there's a 3-D image
which you can actually study while holding your eyes crossed.
Uncrossing is a bit uncomfortable, but there's a trick to that too. You close
your eyes for a couple of seconds while letting your eyes uncross (eyes closed),
only opening them in the uncrossed state. That's it. —Carlos
Fernandez-Gray, Berkeley CA

Wasn't
the actual completion of the railroad in September of 1869 with the opening
of the San Joaquin River bridge making it possible to stay on the train (westbound)
all the way to San Francisco via the ferry terminal at Alameda, California? —C.E.
"Bear" Wilcox
You could say that – California
State Historical Landmark "No. 780-7 First Transcontinental Railroad – Site
of Completion of Pacific Railroad - The construction of the San Joaquin
River bridge completed the last link of the transcontinental railroad. Building
has proceeded simultaneously from the bay area and Sacramento to meet at the
San Joaquin River. The first train crossed the bridge on September
8, 1869." on the original Western Pacific Railroad ... but how about
the Missouri
River railroad bridge from
Council
Bluffs to Omaha, not completed until the 25th of March, 1873 (see Omaha
maps)? – for
ferry crossing
the Missouri River prior
to
that, see the Council
Bluffs & Nebraska Ferry Company & Union Pacific
Transfer Album 1864-1871; (Ron
Goldfeder
of the Museum of Transportation, St. Louis notes that "According to The
Story of the Western Railroads by
Riegel the C&NW [Chicago
and North Western
Railroad] was the first to Council Bluffs in 1867, and got the contract
to carry
the supplies
for the UP to that point, and later the passenger connection for UP trains.
W.B. Ogden was the president of both these lines in 1867."*)
John C. Decker notes that "All Roger Grant reports, on page 30 of his history
of
the
Chicago & North
Western, is that, having built westward only, the railroad, using its
franchise entitled Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railroad, reached Council
Bluffs on
January 17, 1867. [Eugene Lewis notes that CNW "Passenger
service began
February
8,
1867."*] Then
on
February 8, 1867, there was a big gala with the usual events. That would have
made any
similar celebration regarding the opening of
the bridge somewhat superfluous. In the meantime, the Rock Island arrived [at
Council Bluffs] on June 5, 1869, and the [Chicago] Burlington [& Quincy]
on January
18,
1870;
so
if
a gala
were
to have
taken place it would have involved four railroad companies plus a growing community."*
Adrian
Ettlinger notes that "Maury
Klein's UP history, Volume 1, published
1987, has a whole chapter devoted to the bridge. Ironically, whoever
indexed
the book
seemed
to want
to keep this chapter a secret; it is not included among many references to
the bridge. Anyway, the idea that the UP was too financially strapped to
build the bridge is probably an erroneous conclusion, drawing from the fact
the Cities of Omaha and Council Bluffs provided aid to the tune of
$250,000 and $200,000 respectively. But the reason they provided the aid
was that the location of the crossing had become controversial, and an
alternate proposal was to cross at Bellevue to the south, which would have
left Omaha at the end of a stub line. As Klein puts it, the question was
resolved by putting the location 'up for auction,' and the combined
financial assistance of the two cities was the determining factor. But it
was the UP who built the bridge. Klein also includes some interesting
photos of the bridge under construction, and also one photo of tracks across
the river on the ice."* Adrian
Ettlinger notes that "Klein
does not give anything more specific than 'March, 1872' for the
opening of the bridge. Surprisingly, he seems not to have researched any
story of whatever ceremonies may have accompanied the opening. But he does
tell a somewhat surprising tale of how the bridge was grossly underutilized
in its first years. A stalemate occurred as to whether the transfers of
passengers and freight would be at Omaha or Council Bluffs. The eastern
roads wanted the UP to pick up on their side, the UP wanted the eastern
roads to cross the bridge. The UP was under pressure from the City of
Omaha, which refused to make good on its pledge of bonds and real estate
unless Omaha were made the transfer point. The "compromise" was the
"infamous" Omaha Bridge Transfer. To quote Klein: '.....managed to negate
most of the advantages offered by the bridge. Westbound freight and
passengers were unloaded in Council Bluffs and run over the bridge in dummy
trains to the 20th Street Depot in Omaha, where put aboard another train.
The Transfer was treated as a branch with its accounts kept separate from
the railroad. By this ingenious method the bridge became not a boon to
faster schedules but an obstacle requiring the same number of transfers as
the old ferry. The river had been conquered but not the old habit of
bumbling policy.'
... It sounds as if car
interchange may not have been all that common in those days."* Another
contender is the completion of an alternate
rail route via Colorado
that
bypassed the unfinished UPRR Missouri River bridge.
There is a Transcontinental
Railroad Comanche Crossing Museum and the Comanche
Crossing Historical Society
(56060 East Colfax Avenue, Strasburg, Colorado, 303/622-4322) writes that "If
you think the transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory [Summit],
Utah, you've been had! While the Utah site is the place where the rails of the
Union
Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met, the actual completion of the transcontinental
line didn't occur until August 15, 1870 in Strasburg, Colorado." The Colorado
Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation confirms that this was completed
at "Comache Crossing, East of Strasburg, near railroad mile
post 602 (National Register 08/10/1970, 5AH.163): At this site on August 15,
1870, the last spike was driven into the first continuous transcontinental railroad.
The completion of railroad bridges over the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers allowed
all rail transport over this route. An unpretentious white monument marks the
spot which is named for a nearby creek crossed by the railroad." (Wendell
Huffman notes that "15
August 1870 is considered by some to mark the true completion date of the first
transcontinental railroad across the United States. I'm
not even sure of the railroad completed on that date, but I suspect
it was either the Union Pacific Eastern Division or the Kansas
Pacific. The location was some 3812 feet east of the station at
Comanche, Colorado (now Strasburg).
The reason that this 'qualifies' is that those tracks connected
eastward across the Chanute bridge at Kansas City (opened July 3
1869), while the Missouri River bridge at Omaha was not opened until
March 1873. (I believe that cars were run across the ice before that
at Omaha. Was there a car ferry?)
I presume the railroad across the Chanute bridge connected to Chicago
across the Rock Island bridge across the Mississippi (opened 1856),
but I don't know this for a fact.
Just for reference, the Eads Bridge at St. Louis opened July 1874."*)
Kyle Williams Wyatt,
Curator of History & Technology,
California State Railroad Museum comments that
"On the other hand, I believe the UP had a car ferry between Omaha and Council
Bluffs (with tracks directly on ice during winter), and through cars traveled
from coast to coast in 1869 using that route, so I think that constitutes
a complete connection. Further I argue that most traffic did not travel
via the Kansas route but instead traveled via Omaha, so certainly the railroads
considered that the through route after 1869.
If we are arguing that only solid rail connections count, then I observe that
between 1879 and about 1936 the Southern Pacific routed much (most?) of its
traffic west of Sacramento via the old California Pacific and a car ferry
between Benicia and Port Costa (plus ferry connections between Oakland and San
Francisco), so does that mean that the Transcontinental connection was severed for
those years?"* Adrian
Ettlinger responds that "... I
don't think you can say the connection was 'severed' just
because the SP's fastest route was via the Benecia-Port
Costa Ferry. There
were, after all, any number of direct rail routes that were in use at the
same time, e.g., Niles Canyon.
Furthermore, one might quibble and say that during the time of year when
the tracks were across the ice at Omaha, there was a direct track
connection. ... "* Kyle Williams Wyatt responds that " ... many through
railroad routes included car ferries, and that the railroads considered
these to be through routes. Therefore, we
should,
too. Just because a routing without a car ferry exists doesn't mean that the
railroads customarily used it. I believe that most traffic in 1869-70 went via
the Council Bluffs-Omaha route, not via the Kansas Pacific route. So I argue
that the Bluffs-Omaha route, including the car ferry, constitutes the first
through route, as demonstrated by the actual usage by the railroads. ... I'm
not entirely sure about whether the May 11, 1869, excursionists changed cars
at Promontory (and/or elsewhere on their trip).
However the Boston Board of Trade's Boston-San
Francisco Trans-Continental
Excursion of June-July 1870 definitely used the same set of Pullman cars
for the entire trip, so they certainly demonstrated a through route – via
the
Council Bluffs-Omaha car ferry, and also down Market Street in San Francisco
to the front
door of their hotel. ... I believe the first US railroad to touch both the Pacific
and the Atlantic (at the Gulf of Mexico) was the Southern Pacific. The first
North American
railroad to truly span the major breadth of the continent would be the Canadian
Pacific. Both these events occurred in the 1880s."*
Others
will contend that the Panama
Railroad, completed circa January 28, 1855, was
actually the first rail route to span the continent (Wendell Huffman comments
that " ... I'd
suggest that [the Panama Railroad] was not
a North American railroad since
at the time
it was built it was wholly located in the South American country of
Columbia.
Now, I don't know where you chose to divide
South American from North
America, but if in the modern world you chose the canal itself as the
line of demarcation, you still end up with the railroad in South
America as the railroad is on the east–South American–side
of the
canal."*). But
the national
celebration on May 10th, 1869 corresponded
to the end of the race between the CPRR and UPRR with the completion of the
railroads as defined in the enabling
legislation,
the Pacific
Railroad
Act
of
1862, so
that is taken
as the "official" completion date (more than seven years ahead of
schedule!): "Section
17: ... {Main line
to be finished ...} Provided, That if said
roads are not completed, so as to form a continuous
line of railroad, ready for use, from the Missouri river to the navigable waters
of the Sacramento river in California, by the first day of July, eighteen hundred
and seventy-six, the whole of all of said railroads before mentioned, and to
be constructed under the provisions of this act, together with all their furniture,
fixtures, rolling-stock, machine shops, lands, tenements, hereditaments, and
property of every kind and character, shall be forfeited to and taken possession
of by the United States." However, Bowman reports
that "The
question of completion was later raised by the Union Pacific, as it was related
to the company's reception
of federal subsidies and the payment of 5% interest on its net earnings until
the bonds were repaid. In 1879 the U.
S. supreme court decided for November 6,
1869, as the date of completion. The completion for legal and financial
reasons does not affect the celebration of the completion of the tracks for
traffic between
the east and the west."
* [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

In
A
Great and Shining Road John Hoyt Williams tells us liquid Nitroglycerine
"was poured into holes drilled fifteen to eighteen inches into the granite,
capped with a plug, and fired by a slow match or a percussion cap."
How exactly did the percussion cap work? Was there a fuse involved?
—Mara Levy>
There is running discussion of the use of nitroglycerin
and the use of "electric batteries" for its ignition in the Collis P. Huntington
Papers 1856-1901 during the year 1867. John R. Gillis in his paper
given before the ASCE in 1872 on the construction of tunnels on the CPRR
describes the use of nitroglycerin but makes no mention of how it was ignited.
I have never found any source that mentions how the ignition was effected
other than the use of "electric batteries" but just how it performed the
ignition was never explained. —Edson T. Strobridge
[great grand nephew of James Harvey Strobridge]
>In 1867 an awful lot of fuse was purchased, but I have not found any
record of the purchase of batteries. Also see the Nobel
Museum. —G.J. "Chris" Graves, Newcastle, California

How
were rails bent to be used for curved sections of the route?As explained by Lynn Farrar and G.J. "Chris" Graves, this was done by
hand in the 1860's CPPR construction. The image below (detail of A.A.
Hart Stereoview #333, "Curving Iron. Ten Mile Canyon") shows a section of
rail placed spanning across two ties which sit above the track (the two extra
ties on top of the rails of the partially completed roadbed are being used
to support the two ends of the rail being bent). The rail being bent
is held in place by two wooden tools while being beaten into the curved shape
by two men with a sledge hammers working near both ends of the rail (foreground,
right). This bending is possible with 1860's iron rail which is malleable
(later steel rail was brittle and would break instead of bending).
David Bain indicates that in the 1860s the UP had a steam-powered railbender
machine. CPRR First Assistant Chief Engineer Lewis
M. Clement, according to notes made by his daughter, Maude L. Clement,
invented a machine to bend rails to the correct radius for curves which
saved a great deal of time and money over the old manual method.

From the Southern Pacific Bulletin, July, 1927, page 13:

"A track gang working a curving rain in Ten-Mile Canyon along the Humbolt River
in Nevada during the building of the original Central Pacific Lines ... The picture
was probably taken during 1867. Crude
methods were used in curving the 56 pound to the yard iron rail compared with
modern machinery necessary to curve the 90 lb., 110 lb. and the latest 130 pound
steel rails. Two ties were placed on the tracks about twenty-five feet apart. The
thirty-two foot rail was laid on its side across the two ties. Six or eight
men stood on the rail. Another man, as the one shown in the picture with the
hammer, started at one of the rail wielding lusty swings with his hammer, the
weight of the men standing on the rail adding the spring necessary to bend the
rail. One man would step off the rail to make room for the man with the hammer,
and then would step back on the rail again. The hammer men acquired great skill
in their work. The rail would be stood on end and by sighting along the rail
or measuring with a string, the hammer man would know just where to give the
rail a few more blows with the hammer to give the proper balanced curve. White
laborers were engaged in this class of work."

In all my wanderings along the grade, I have found but one such sledge, a
15 lb. sledge made by Thomas Nelson and Abner Doble, doing business as "Nelson
and Doble," 135-137 Fremont St., San Francisco, in 1868.
This was found just east of Mormon Hill, Cobre, Nevada. —GJ Chris
Graves, NewCastle, AltaCal'a.

Roger Brown, San Diego, California, writes: "From the photo it appears
that the two stout wooden handles near each end of the rail are levers. The
pressure
on the rail can be adjusted by how far the men sit from the rail. The man in
the
foreground is about 2 ft. from the end. Pressure is applied by the lever and
the rail bending occurs when the rail is struck by a heavy hammer. It means
that the
rails were relatively soft and malleable. The curve is more than required because
the rail will likely spring back to less curve than with the lever pressure
applied. The levers are over a tie and likely were hooked and driven under
or into the
tie similar to a hay fork or an ice tong." Also see
discussion.

What
was the standard rail length used by the CPRR? I understand that 30 foot rails
were usual for most railroads, but I saw a reference to a
32-foot rail in the answer to the question about on-site curving of
rails.
What was the standard number of ties per rail? Did they use "joint
ties" i.e. closely spaced ties at the joint between two rail section?
Did they lay the rails with even joints or broken joints? That is, did
they have the joints for the left and right rails at the same point on
a section of track or did they stagger them?
(1) Staggered rail joints – yes, abundant photographic evidence on construction
era photographs show
staggered
joints. Standard rail construction practice in that period (my 1877 Roadmaster's Assistant Guide details this at pg. 9-10).
(2) No they didn't
double tie in pairs (see #4 below) under the rail joints; just put a tie
directly under the rail ends at the center of the fish plate. Again,
photographic evidence of the construction era shows this although the double tie
support was recommended (1877 Roadmaster's Assistant Guide, pg. 9, see #4
below).
(3) The standard rail joints was 30' BUT due to the joint
staggering, one had to insert lengths of 24', 20', 18', and 15' depending on
the degree of curvature. In the description of the 10 miles of rail laid
the weight carried into 10 miles 56 ft comes out to 560#/rail or
10yds(30)/56# rail/yd (the writer could have assumed all rail was 30' but it
would have been impossible to properly stagger
the joints with only 30' rails – Ass't Roadmaster's Guide, pg.
25, gives
as
follows: 704 15' ft rails, 660 16 ft rails, 567 18ft rails, 503 21ft
rails, 377 28ft rails, 352 30ft rails for 1 mile of track. (on pg. 9 of the
Guide) uniform rails recommended except shorter ones for curves; laid
on
the INNER rail of the curve (Guide pg. 10) to maintain the joint stagger.
(4) The number of ties/mile varied as to the degree of curvature the
spacing varied according to the curvature: 2' center to center is
2,641; 2 1/2' center to center is 2,113; 2 3/4 center to center is 1,931; and,
3' center to center is 1,761. Galloway in his book The
First transcontinental
Railroad (1950 on pg.
142 states the tie number/mile varied from 2,260/mile to 2,640/ mile
implying a 2 1/2' spacing down to a (2,260 divided by 2,640 times 2 1/2) is about
2' spacing. The 1878 Guide recommends 16 ties/30' rail' (pg 9) not less
than 2' spacing with 10" spacing tie edge to tie edge at the rail
joints.
—Charles N. Sweet

Clearly rail lengths were generally limited by the length of cars to
haul them, but when the Central Pacific shipped rail to California
via Panama starting in 1868, they were limited by the confines of the
steamships – 20 feet lengths as I recall. The limitation was a
combination of hatch size and space in holds, as rail had to be fed
down through the hatch and laid secure in the hold.
Locomotives shipped via Panama (as opposed to sail around Cape Horn)
had to have their boilers cut in half for the same reason. —Wendell
Huffman.[from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

Long after the CPRR was constructed, the length of flatcars which had been
smaller and varied became standardized at about 40 feet, so subsequently, rail
length became uniform at 39 feet ... about [the] 1900-1915 era. ...
Previously the standard was 33 foot lengths (to fit in 34 foot cars). ... the
earlier length was 29 feet (to fit in 30
foot cars) ... Civil War-era rails were 12' - 25' long. [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

The rail used for the CPRR construction was shipped
by sea, so not all the original rail was actually 30' long (some was as short
as
22')
due
to
manufacturing
variation
and because rail
had to be short enough to fit in the hold of the ship.
Is
it permitted to printout the CPRR Museum website?
Not unless you obtain permission
which requires that you be very specific in your request, but students
can click here to obtain instant permission
to use printer friendly homework pictures, and we hope that you will
enjoy studying the articles, exhibits
and other content on-line for free and ask
if specific material is needed for other use. Our museum project
was designed for on-line viewing, not for
paper which has very different requirements. Putting the Central
Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum website on paper isn't really
feasible because it has thousands of pages, the images are not the correct
resolution/size for print use, printing thousands of color pictures would
be prohibitively expensive, the search capability
and tens of thousands of navigation links that give the site its organization
and connect it to information available elsewhere
would be lost, some of the source attributions that are indicated by hyperlinks
and/or hyperlink titles would be lost, and
because
we
do
not
have
the
legal
ability
to
grant
very
broad permission requests. Your
request seems simple, but you may not realize that our ability to grant
permission varies from image to image, and page to page, so you'll need
to be very specific in your request. A request to printout even
a single webpage may require the ownership/permission status of a dozen
or more different pictures with different donors
to be researched, and the necessary permissions may not all be available
for the text as well as all the images on that page. Nevertheless,
we would be pleased to try to assist, in keeping with the permissions
section of the CPRR Museum website's user agreement. If you'll tell
us the specific text and/or images you would like to use, we'll see
if we can help.
I
am a docent at CSRM
and someone else there told me that the original picture was dropped by
the camera man and since it was a glass plate it shattered and a new picture
(the one everyone knows so well) was made. Is that true? Most
of the docents at CSRM tell the story of Stanford and Durant missing the
spike and a railroad man hitting it. How do you know that is not
true? Do you have information about surviving CPRR equipment?
Virginia & Truckee car 17 former car 25 is on display at Nevada State
Railroad Museum. They claim it was at the Golden spike meet used
to carry officials and the ceremony spikes. The car was built in
Sacramento by CPRR and sold to V&T later. (Information from the Nevada
State Railroad Museum website.) Is there a list of equipment
that was at Promontory? Also another locomotive was supposed to go
and the Jupiter was put in at the last minute when the first one broke
down. The Gov. Stanford was supposedly built 5 foot gauge and changed to
4ft 8 1/2 inches when the CPRR was forced to use that size rail?
(Information from people at CSRM.) Is any of this true? Please reply
if you can to help me straighten out the myths about the CPRR. —Steamengine4294>
There is a cracked A. J. Russell Promontory imperial view glass negative
at the Oakland Museum, but don't know when it was broken. The
story
about the Antelope being damaged on the way to the golden spike ceremony
by a log on the track and the substitution of the Jupiter is briefly retold and
is based on the delightful first hand account on page 79 in an article written
by
one
of the passengers on Stanford's train, Stillman, entitled
"The
Last Tie" in the July, 1869 issue of the magazine "The Overland Monthly."
>
Regarding driving the last spike: Be careful not to confuse "Driving
the Golden Spike" which, along with the second gold spike and the two silver
ones were only ceremonial and were actually dropped into holes in the Laurel
Tie previously drilled to accept them. The "Last Spike" was actually an
iron spike, set by the Chinese workers in the last rail. This
spike was
to be driven by Stanford and Durant and was the spike that was missed.
It was finally driven by James Harvey Strobridge, Superintendent of
Construction for the CP and Samuel Reed, Supt. of Construction the UP but the
one who gave
the last blow for "Done" is unknown. Suggest you read J. Bowman,
"Driving the Last Spike," The
Calif. Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 36, 1957 which provides an analysis
of all the sources reporting on that event. It is by far the most
complete and accurate report of the events of the day. —Edson T. Strobridge
>
Kyle Wyatt at CSRM did the research on the Commissioners' Car while
curator of history at Nevada State Railroad Museum. The conclusion that
the
Virginia & Truckee
car
was
indeed the commissioners' car is based on its purchase from CP, newspaper
accounts, and photo comparison. It is an odd-duck, not obviously built
by a recognized car builder. It may well have been built for the
CP at the Sacramento Valley RR
shops at Folsom. None of the dust inside has been positively
identified as originating at Promontory. I believe there is a passenger
car in a shopping mall in Napa Valley (Yontville?) off the California Pacific
that may have been among the eastern-built (Wasson?) cars that was attached
to the UP train at Promontory and transferred to the CP on their way to
California. Given the chronology of the order and shipment of the
Gov. Stanford, the chronology of Lincoln's decision on standard gauge,
and the fact that the other railroads in California were five-foot
gauge, I believe that the Gov. Stanford was indeed ordered, and probably
built to five-foot gauge, and subsequently regauged. —Wendell Huffman
[Librarian at Carson City, Nevada]
>
(1) the "cracked plate" story is apocryphal. (2) Yes, the Gov. Stanford
was originally 5' gauge and converted to standard gauge. (3) Stanford participated
but Durant did not in "driving" the golden spike (really the wired
iron
one). —Charles N. Sweet
[fireman on the JUPITER Locomotive, Promontory Summit]
> But see the Stanford/Durant swing and miss first hand account
of Alexander Toponce.
Sierra
Railroad Survey Map by S.G. Elliot, 1860 showing wagon roads; California 4th
State
Surveyor
General John
Alexander Brewster, Aug. 1856 Map; David B. Scott, Aug. 1855 California Map— Can
you
help?
...
I am doing some research on a section of the pioneer trail between Verdi Nevada
and Truckee California.
While I was doing research I came upon a reference to an 1860 survey map
created by S.G. Elliott for the purpose of railroad construction. According to
the source
(California Historical Society Quarterly, vol #10, 1932, page 347), the map depicted
various routes over the central sierra and of SPECIAL INTEREST to me the wagon
roads as they existed in 1860.
Do you know of the existence of this map or could you direct me to the appropriate
sources? Sincerely —Edward
Hodges
3/25/2003
P.S. ... My emphasis is on locating two maps of that area dated from the mid
1850's. The most important map was created by then State Surveyor General John
Brewster
in Aug. 1856. He prepared the map for the citizens of Downeville who were then
competing with other Central California towns to have the first wagon road across
the Sierra. I located the description of his survey in the Annual Report of the
Surveyor General dated 1856. However, there was no map included and no mention
of where to find it in the appendix. The other map covers the same general area
and was created by David B. Scott in Aug. 1855. He too prepared his map for potential
road building.
I
suppose you know that E. Muybridge did shoot the Captain in Napa, and the
Capt. was the father of the child that bore the Muybridge name. F.
Muybridge died in Sacramento, California in 1940 or so, run over by a car.
The Capt. was disinterred from the cemetery in Napa, as was Mrs. M. and
Mr. M. ... all three are now in Colma, within a stones throw of each other.
Muybridge said as he shot the Capt. "This is for my wife!" —G.J. "Chris" GravesThe
University of Nevada, Reno has a priceless collection of maps in the David
Rumsey Map Collection that are available online. It's a great site! I can
zero in on the detail of maps ... in any scale. Pretty slick. One of my favorites
is a Bielewski map of 1865 as printed by Hoffman and Pruett. It shows the CPRR
alignment on the south side of the Truckee River through Reno, not the north.
It also shows a CPRR spur along Steamboat Creek. Also, the old
Nevada topographic maps are available online ... via the Keck Library. Both
sites ... show just about every rail alignment, and proposed alignment. —Robert
Joe King

What
were the standard colors of CPRR passenger
cars and depots?
I just came across an old newspaper article which referred
to a depot roof being painted "regulation" red by CPRR painters,
and the folks at the California State Railway Museum chose to paint the depot
there
two-toned green. I've also seen a color photo of a preserved/restored car
(reportedly in a park in Yuma AZ) purported to be an old
CPRR passenger car ...and a green similar to one of those in the two toned
scheme predominates with red trim, like the depot roof. Could these have
been the colors? Doesn't anybody know, either from old lithos, work orders,
or writings?
This might make a great topic for your website. I've been experimenting with
my somewhat older videocam whose viewfinder renders a [black & white] image. I'm
mixing paints and viewing them side by side thru the viewfinder. Findings
so far: Red and Green look dark, yellow looks white. Orange and light green
come out identically medium. Increasingly lighter shades of green become
lighter. In the numerous photos on the CPRR Museum site, there appear to be
two
distinct
shades of passenger cars, particularly evident in those photos when they appear
in the same train. My guess based on my simple experimenting is that the
light cars were yellow while the somewhat darker cars were either orange
or light
green. This suggests that there was a change at some point. I'm thinking
that maybe the CPRR started out with yellow cars (probably called "orange"
by one of the Big Four), but since the Union Pacific colors were yellow and
red, decided to go with something more distinctive. Pure conjecture. It's
a wonder that nobody has analyzed the paint layers or traces of whatever
old
CPRR cars might remain. ... The article appears in the Berkeley Herald of April
5, 1894. Review of my own records last evening indicates that the SP took
over the operation of the Berkeley Branch Railroad from the Central Pacific
in 1885,
nine years before. Thus, a question remains about whose "regulation" dictated
the painting of the red roof. SP's regulation roof color was moss green according
to all the sources I've seen. And there's a possibility that SP retained
the
"regulation" CPRR colors for the Berkeley branchline until it began
constructing its own standard depots. The old CP-built depot in Berkeley
was replaced by an SP standard No.23 by about 1895-96, very close to the
date of
the article mentioned. Oddly, no article seems to have appeared announcing
the change, but it's obvious when comparing old photos and plats. I'm not
sure
this leaves us any closer to resolving the CPRR paint color mystery. I'm astounded
and mystified why nobody at the time–it seems–described the colors.
... —Carlos Fernandez-Gray, Berkeley CA
> Make sure that the spectral sensitivity of your videocamera matches that
of collodion glass plate negatives before relying upon your color experiments.
The 19th century photographs were blue/ultraviolet
sensitive. So the green and red component of colors would likely register
as grey with your black and white videocamera, but black in prints made from
glass plate negatives with the late 1860's to early 1870's collodion emulsion.
—CPRR.org
> The Sony Videocam (about 10 years old) shows red as the darkest shade,
virtually black in the viewfinder. Green is comparable, but visibly slightly
lighter. I tested for a darker green using evergreen tree foliage and a
mature ivy leaf, and in the viewfinder, they're indistinguishable from red. In
the light, however, ivy leaves can appear whitish AND black, depending on
which
is in the sunlight. An 1880s photo of the old Berkeley CP depot includes ivy
in the foreground, and the same effect is apparent. I found no difference
between dull and lighted red, so in full sunlight, some difference between
red
and green would probably be apparent in old BW photos, except in the case of
a dull, non-shiny dark green–such as a classic Pullman. Incidentally,
in the photo mentioned above, the small depot appears to have a two-tone paint
scheme on its walls with a horizontal dividing line exactly halfway up. The
tone above is very light, but not white, suggesting it's light green or
yellow.
The color below is only slightly darker, but distinct, suggesting a darker
light green or yellow. I'm inclined to go with the two-toned light green
in view of the way the restored Sacramento CP depot was painted although I
have yet
to discover why the restorers decided on those colors. I'd like to check the
BW appearance of the Sacramento depot with my videocam to compare the tones. BTW,
I understand that there are two other surviving CP depots, one in Auburn
and
the other in Chico–someone ought to analyze their paint layers, if they
haven't already. —Carlos Fernandez-Gray Berkeley CA

Mr.
Charles Crocker's grave site is located in Oakland,
at the Piedmont Cemetery. Often, I officiate funerals there and often visit
his grave site. The irony or humor of it all, is that there is a hillside overlooking
Crocker's grave site which are filled with Chinese descendants (hundreds if not
thousands). It is prime property overlooking the S.F.-Oakland Bay.
—Rev. Alvin Louie (a Minister of the Gospel as well as an enthusiast for
knowing the truth about the 10,000 or so Chinese laborers of the CPRR)The
State Library continues to be a source of enjoyment.... The Sacramento
Union, Aug. 27, 1856 says that T.W. (Tullius) Strobridge was appointed to
a committee with Cornelius Cole, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and others
... to select voting delegates to the state convention. On August
28, 1856, the Sacramento Union gives a list of delegates to the convention
that includes Thomas O. Larkin, Phil Stanford (Leland's brother), Frank
Pixley, Edwin B. Crocker, Cornelius Cole, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford,
T.W. Strobridge, Charles Crocker, and Collis P. Huntington. These
folks were dealing with each other years before Judah hit 'em up
for cash... —G.J. "Chris" Graves

What
was the average rate of railroad construction?
The rate of progress varied greatly from about a foot a day when blasting through
rock in the summit tunnel to the world's
record of ten miles in one day.

UPRR:
The number of miles of road constructed and accepted during each governmental
fiscal year is as follows:

Year ending June 30, 1866 105
Year ending June 30, 1867 240
Year ending June 30, 1868 275
Year ending June 30, 1869 380
Year ending June 30, 1870 85.88 ...

CPRR:
The first map of definite location of this road, "from Sacramento, Cal.,
to a point 50 miles east thereof," was filed in the General Land Office
October 20, 1864, and the last one, "from Monument Point to Echo Summit,
head of Echo Canon, Utah," was filed October 20, 1868. Maps of construction
have been filed, with affidavits of the chief engineer of the company,
bearing the dates following:
Sacramento, Cal., to the 31st mile-post, October 19, 1865, and from
the-

Who
put the last spike in the Transcontinental Railroad?
In part, the answer depends on which "last
spike" you mean. Stanford did "drive" the more famous of the
two ceremonial golden spikes -- the one now in a safe under glass at the
Stanford University Museum ("drive" is in quotes because gold is too soft
to be hit with a hammer -- a hole was predrilled into the ceremonial laurel
wood "last tie" so that the
golden "last spike" could be dropped in -- the main purpose of the hammer
was to complete the telegraph
circuit to signal the event). There were also several silver last
spikes. If by "last spike" you mean the permanent last iron spike
driven into the permanent tie that remained in place at the end of the
day, then the answer is that one of the CPRR Chinese
workers probably drove the last spike. See the definitive article
on this subject, published by the California Historical Society, "Driving
the Last Spike at Promontory, 1869." by J. N.
Bowman, 1957.

Can anyone help me understand why Judah chose the Donner Pass route instead
of modifying the existing, well used wagon road from Placerville to Virginia
City? I understand there are two summits to cross with the southern route, but
was that really enough reason to use that horrible northern route? It's interesting
that even though Judah had crossed the summit dozens of times looking for a good
route, and undoubtedly knew of the Donner Trail, that Doc Strong was able to
convince him that the route from Dutch Flat to Donner Pass was the best route
across the Sierras. —Doug Gilbertson
> A single ascent and descent across the Sierra Nevada summit was indeed essential. —CPRR.org
> Judah did not recklessly choose the
location he did but with all the considerations he had to make he chose the one
he did for good reasons. Actually he performed
barometric surveys on at least five routes which he briefly describes in his
Chief Engineers Report. Modern day railroad engineers continue to proclaim that
if the route was to be selected today it would essentially be in the same location
as it is now as it is still the most practical crossing of the Sierras from Sacramento.
Doc Strong did not have to convince Judah of the benefits of the Donner route after
he showed him the ridge he could cross from the south side at Emigrants gap to
the north side with no deep canyons or major rivers to cross to reach the summit.
It was and still is considered by many engineers as a brilliant piece of location
engineering especially when one considers it was made over 140 years ago.
I would suggest your correspondent read and study Judah's
Chief Engineer's Report as it may help his understanding of the problems
and conditions that were considered and the reasons Judah made the decisions
he did. —Edson T. Strobridge
> Well, there were two advantages to the Placerville route. It remains at
a lower altitude for much of the distance as it crosses the Pacific Crest, so
the significant
problems resulting from heavy snowfall would have been lessened. They would have
had snow, but less of it. And it is likely Judah did not realize the extent of
the problems caused by snow, and thus did not make it a consideration in his
decision making process. Additionally, the SVRR was already in Folsom, so they
would have been off to a good start. However, despite the advantages, the overwhelming
obstacle to the Placerville Route was the double summits. I believe this was
of paramount importance to Judah, and for good reason. Moving a heavy train up
and over the summit of the Sierras is a time consuming and expensive task. Doing
it twice, when it is not necessary, would be unthinkable.
I am not sure that Placerville would be a good second choice. Astute railroad
historian Wendell Huffman suggests the Henness Pass route may have been more
practical than the Donner Route. Certainly the second summit (Dog Valley around
Crystal Peak) would have been much less of an obstacle than that the second summit
on the Placerville Route. And had one been willing to add more mileage to the
Henness Pass route, they could have looped southward and followed the same Truckee
River Canyon. More northern routes, like Honey Lake and Madaline Plains offered much
easier crossings, but would have been much longer. So, there were other alignments
that may have been better than the Placerville Route. The natural ramp up the
western slope of the Sierra, via Dutch Flat, provides
a "practical" route
to the Pacific Crest. And once the grade reaches Truckee, the descent down the
Truckee River Canyon into Nevada is an easy one. Once there,
the alignment is perfect to progress east. The most amazing engineering in my
opinion, is the alignment that took place between Summit Valley and Horseshoe
Bend. The current alignment is one of the most direct, and passes within the
immediate area of the Nevada mines, an important concern at the time.
So, do I think the Donner Route is the best? Probably. Was there a better route?
Maybe, but I doubt it. Do I think the Placerville Route was a better choice?
No, no chance. I think it was Mead Kibbey that relayed a statement made by the
Chief Engineer of the Southern Pacific Railroad "with a few minor changes,
the
current route is the best known." —Dana Scanlon [historian in
Sacramento]
> I suspect the primary reason for the selection of Donner (more properly
Stephens) Pass is that all the other known practical routes (and all were known
well before
Judah ever saw California in 1854) were encumbered by state franchises to wagon
toll roads, and Judah recognized from the very beginning that a wagon road had
to proceed the railroad. It was said that Judah never even examined the Placerville
route and traveled it only once on his way back to Sacramento from Virginia City.
The Donner route itself had already been surveyed for a wagon road AND RAILROAD
before Strong ever showed it to Judah in October 1860.
From August 1854 until July 1860, Judah expected (and advocated) the route through
either Nobles Pass or the Madeline Plains for the railroad. This was the route
surveyed by Edward G. Beckwith for the US Army. The discovery of the Comstock–while
Judah was in Washington DC–made the high cost of a route directly through
the
central Sierra appear financially feasible. Remember–engineers could put
a railroad
almost anywhere–Mt. Washington, Pikes Peak, etc. Engineers spoke of practicality,
but but the ultimate measure of practicality was money. Engineers in general–and
Judah in particular–looked upon railroads as tools to move money from other
people's pockets into their own.
Despite their expectations, the Huntington-Stanford-Hopkins-Crocker brothers-controlled
Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road attracted very little business and the
connecting/parallel Central Pacific carried very little of the San Francisco-Virginia
City commerce. The business they did secure was bound for Idaho. It is my contention
that the CP would have been more profitable had they followed Judah's original
route up the Sacramento Valley and around the north end of the Sierra Nevada.
They would have avoided the very expensive construction in the mountains, would
have accumulated federal bonds faster, would have carried even more of the Idaho
traffic, and would not have generated the opposition of the other parties engaged
in the Virginia City trade. And, had they done that, they would probably have
been well east of the Watsatch Mountains when they finally met the Union Pacific.
Sadly, the principals of the Central Pacific RR knew no more of their future
than we know of ours. —Wendell Huffman,
Carson City

> In the 1850s the Lassen Trail and the Nobles trail followed the same
path into California for a few miles along the east side of Lassen
Peak. Lassen's trail (used first by emigrants to California in 1848)
connected the Applegate road (which ran from the California trail
near modern Lovelock, Nv to southwest Oregon) at Goose Lake in
northeastern California and wandered southward until it hit the
headwaters of the Feather River and then turned west toward the
Sacramento Valley. The Nobles Trail ran westward from the site of
modern Lovelock through the site of modern Susanville, to Hat Creek
(north of Lassen Peak) and then down to Redding/Reading (depending
upon your year of reference and whomever it happened to be named for
at the time).
So, for about five or ten miles, these two routes into California
followed the same trace, with emigrants using the Lassen trail going
south and those on the Nobles trail going the opposite direction. Who
went which way depended upon point of origin and point of destination-
-and what ignorance of topography any particular traveler subscribed
to.
The point being that California's mix of roads and confusion is
nothing new.
And, to bring this back to railroads: the first Pacific railroad
would most likely have followed a combination of Lassen trail (from
the upper Sacramento Valley to the headwaters of the Feather) and the
Nobles trail (from the Feather, past site of Susanville and on to the
Humboldt River at or near Lovelock) had it not been for the discovery
of the Comstock Lode in 1859 and the attraction of that commerce to
those who organized and financed the Central Pacific.
Their interest in the Comstock cost the company the animosity of
those already engaged in the Comstock trade (which translated into
lost income and lost local financing) and the high cost of building
and operating a railroad across the Sierra at 7000 feet. Had they
stuck with Judah's pre-1859 plan, they would have crossed the
mountains over a thousand feet lower over less rugged terrain, they
would have likely received more local funding, have built track
faster (and received federal bonds for track built faster), have
carried more of the Idaho commerce (which was essentially all they
carried into 1868), and probably would have reached the eastern side
of the Sierra a couple years earlier (which would have netted them
the Comstock trade sooner). And, they may have met the Union Pacific
near Cheyenne rather than Promontory (which, if nothing else) would
have gotten them coal (but may actually have kept the UP out of
Oregon and Southern California). ... —Wendell Huffman,
Carson City [from the R&LHS Newsgroup]

Did
the CPRR actually own the land "granted" or did they have to patent it to gain
ownership?
There were different Congressional Grants made to allow construction of the
transcontinental
railroad. Much of the main line right of way granted under the Congressional
Grants [the original land grant is at §3 of the 1862 Act], such as the
right of way in Reno for instance, is reversionary and can only be used for railroad/transportation
purposes. The railroad can lease portions of the right of way under
short term leases or longer term leases that have 90 day termination provisions.
The railroad cannot sell any of the main line right of way. If the
railroad (now UPRR) was ever to abandon any right of way, it would revert back
to the government. The "Section Lands" are a different
matter. In
order to encourage the building of the transcontinental railroad, Congress granted
(in fee) CP alternating Sections
of land (20 alternate Sections per mile) out from the main line corridor.
The government kept the other alternating Sections of land, thereby benefiting,
as the construction of the railroad increased the value of the railroad's Section
Lands and the Government's. Thus, the main line operating right of way
(varies in width) is not patented in the railroad and reverts to the Government
on cessation
of use. ... The Section Lands are patented in the railroad (fee
title). For each 40 miles of railroad built, the Section Lands were
patented to the railroad. The patents to the land were not recorded in
the
County recorders office, but in the U.S. Land Office. This created some
subsequent confusion for title companies in their issuance of title to purchasers
who had no idea that it was grant land. The 1862 Act of Congress [§4: "...
patents shall issue conveying the right and title to said lands to said company,
on each side of the road, as far as the same is completed, to the amount aforesaid;
and patents shall in like manner issue as each forty miles of said railroad and
telegraph line are completed, upon certificate of said commissioners ... "]
corresponds
to my understanding. The 1862 Act granted alternating Sections 10 miles
out from the main line right of way, and the 1864 Act amended that to 20 miles
on each side of the right of way. I understand that location maps had to
be filed before the land was granted, and that the granted properties could
not
contain minerals except for iron or coal. ... I found in my personal
experience that many of the deeds conveying land to SPRR for instance, were deeds
from private individuals. Many of those properties were not only for the right
of way itself, but for other property holdings adjoining the right of way in
excess of what was need for railroad operations. In other words, if the railroad
needed a 60 foot wide right of way for instance, they would acquire the lands
in the path the railroad was to traverse and not just acquire a 60 foot wide
strip of property, but all of a land parcel owned by someone if that is what
was needed to get the railroad built. The Federal land grants to CPRR/SPRR were
generally for properties in the middle of nowhere, which was most of the western
United States in those days! The land grants to CPRR/SPRR were 7/1/1862, 7/25/1866,
7/27/1866, 3/3/1871 and 3/3/1875. These land grants covered a portion of the
right of way that was owned by SPRR. Much of the property I sold for SPRR (and
UPRR after the takeover) came into the railroad's ownership by private individuals. ... Looks
like Nevada
Land and Resource Company, LLC purchased the SP Section lands in Nevada.
As info, during the failed merger of the SP and ATSF in the mid 1980's, all of
the non-operating land assets of the SP were absorbed into Santa Fe Southern
Pacific
Corps'. subsidiary Santa Fe Pacific Realty–I worked for them at the time.
The non-railroad land holding companies were not subject to ICC scrutiny and
could be merged into the parent company, whereas the SP (as a railroad operating
company)
needed the ICC's blessing to be merged with the ATSF. SP was held in a
voting trust during the merger proceedings, its plant slowly decaying as little
or no
money was put into the SP during this time. Ultimately, the protective
conditions placed on the merger by the ICC made the merger infeasible, thus
Santa Fe Southern
Pacific Corp. decided to spin off the SP. The lands absorbed by Santa Fe
Southern Pacific included all of the Section lands, industrial parks, forest,
desert and agricultural properties held under Southern Pacific Land Company,
Southern Pacific Industrial Development Company (SPIDCO) and any other non-railroad
holding
companies. Thus, when Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corp sold the SP to Phil
Anschutz in 1988, they kept the non-railroad land assets mentioned above, however,
the core railroad lands (the rights of way, station grounds, switching yards)
went with the SP to Anschutz. Anyway, a brief synopsis of the huge sucking
sound that started the decimation of the SP. ... the railroad's property maps
(called property valuation maps or "val maps") generally designated the
company's holdings ... via heavy dotted and dashed lines and
railroad parcel numbers located within the specific parcel of land that designated
the incoming acquisition deed. On the val map itself or on a separate map, there
would be a "Schedule of Property" that would show each parcel and provide
the specifics of who sold the property to the railroad and the specific date
and
recording information. —Robert
M.
Krantz
(formerly
of the SPRR Land Department.[Disclaimer: For informational
purposes only. This website does not offer legal advice, and the above information
may not apply to your real estate situation. It is imperative that you seek the
services of a qualified real estate attorney if the need arises.]

Who
was the winner of the transcontinental railroad race?
Building the transcontinental railroad was certainly, as Congress intended,
a race in the sense of a highly successful business competition, and consequently
the best answer as to who won is probably everybody. The railroad
was completed years ahead of schedule as a result. At the completion
of the first transcontinental railroad, the CPRR
was 742 miles long (including 47 1/2 miles purchased and 5 miles leased
from the UPRR); and the UPRR was 1,032 miles long. (These figures
do not include double counting of the miles of parallel grading in Utah
which the CPRR and UPRR both hired Mormon contractors to perform.)
The U.S. government financing, while making it possible to build the transcontinental
railroad, gave the railroads essentially nothing. The U.S. Supreme
Court ultimately concluded that government loaned
money to the railroads that had to be repaid in full with interest, and
gave almost
worthless land grants to the railroads while retaining an equal
amount of land (in a checkerboard pattern) that was then made valuable
(where water was available) only as a result of the successful railroad
construction. But judging who won just by the number of miles constructed
is probably misleading. The two railroads did not break ground or
start laying track at the same time, and miles on the CPRR were not equivalent
to miles on the UPRR because building over and through the Sierra Nevada
mountains of California was much more difficult (and bonds were issued
at a much greater amount/mile) than for the construction across flat Nebraska.
(But the CPRR construction was financed based on the government moving
the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains to just outside Sacramento,
by sleight of hand, so keeping score by dollars also isn't quite equivalent
either.) Additionally, construction was held up by difficulties with
financing (the CPRR wasted 2 years taking the City of San Francisco to
the California Supreme Court to get them to pay what they owed), as well
as by physical difficulties in accomplishing the construction. You
could say that the CPRR won because it built way beyond the California-Nevada
border which was the goal at its inception. You could say that the
UPRR won because in the end it had more track. You could say that
the UPRR won because today it is the surviving company which owns the assets
that comprised the CPRR at the completion of the first transcontinental
railroad. You could say that the CPRR won because it beat the UPRR
in the contest to see who could lay the most track in one day and succeeded
in extending the line by more than 10 miles on April
28, 1869, a record
that has never been surpassed. Actually, everybody won. The
country certainly won by having a transcontinental railroad that dramatically
cut the cost and time for travel and opened up the far west, while politically
the United States became a single entity from Atlantic to Pacific. Taxpayers
won by
saving
more
than a billion dollars with the federal discount on transcontinental freight
charges through
the
end
of WW II.
The entrepreneurs who built the roads, in the process overcoming almost
unimaginable difficulties, certainly won in the sense that they bet their
entire fortunes, overcame the doubters, and succeeded in accomplishing
what they set out to do, becoming fabulously wealthy as a result. The Chinese
railroad workers certainly won because they were able to save about $20 a
month
in gold (according to the Alta California of November 9, 1868), enabling
many of
them to return to China as relatively wealth men.
The members of Congress certainly won in the sense that they got not only
their bribes, but a huge scandal about the UPRR's financing that they could
continue to revisit for decades. The farmers and other citizens of
California and the west certainly won in that the railroads made transcontinental
trade dramatically faster and less expensive, while providing them with
an "outrage" that could keep them amused for decades that transportation
costs had only dropped perhaps 90%, not 95% as they wished. California
certainly won by being transformed from a remote frontier into probably
the most successful economy in the history of the world.
[Discuss]Much
is often made of the fact that the photographs taken at Promontory on May 10,
1869 showed no Chinese workers.[sic] I had accepted the traditional explanation
that this was simple racism, which I believe is the usual explanation given by
docents at CSRM, where I am a docent. I was surprised to read
in "High Road To Promontory" (Kraus) pg. 273 a description of the laying of the
last two rails. His description is spread over several pages, but is essentially
this – A special honor squad of Chinese workers had been selected to carry
the rail. As they approached someone yelled for Charles
Savage to take a photo. The honor squad saw they were to be photographed,
dropped the rail, and ran for cover. It required some inducement to get them
to return and complete the job. If I were a photographer at this event
I would take this as a sign that the Chinese workers didn't want their photo
taken, and would respect that. ... —Anne Ogborn,
docent, CSRM
Apparently there were very few Chinese at the ceremony. "Driving
the Last Spike At Promontory, 1869" by J. N. Bowman states that "The bulk
of the Chinese and other workers who had completed the line by May 1 had been
shunted westward to improve certain points of the line, leaving only a few, perhaps
a dozen, to do the grading, lay the ties and drive the few spikes of the west
rail, lay the east rail for the ceremony, and
replace the laurel tie."
>
... So far as the Chinese at Promontory are involved additional information has
been uncovered that was not available to J.N. Bowman who had written the best
record of that event from sources that were available to him in
1957. The story of the "camera shy" Chinese is no more than another myth
comparable to the Cape Horn Legend and there are
a great many of them that have been imbedded in our collective memory of the
history of the Pacific Railroad... This is another case of having to prove a
negative which as you know is a difficult, time consuming, if not impossible
thing to do. It is a 20th century interpretation of a 19th century event made
by writers who never took the time to investigate the facts and who failed to
stay within the context of the time of the
event itself. The story that Anne Ogborn relates to about "someone yelling
for Charlie to take a shot" is an old fable that seems to change with each telling.
The first time this story was told was when an old timer was being interviewed
about his reminisces of his days on the Central Pacific by the Southern Pacific
Railroad's Public Relations Department, some 50 years after the event occurred.
In that original telling when the word "shot" was made the Chinese ran for cover
because they assumed it was a powder blast about to be set off. There were no
photographs of the event even though there were at least two photographers there,
Savage and A.A.
Hart. There were no stories in the contemporary newspapers that related
the story of the Chinese dropping the rail and running for cover even though
there were at least 12-15 newspaper reporters covering the event. It simply
is not a true story and again in my opinion nothing more than the ramblings of
an old man who thought it was funny to make fun of the Chinese and later historians
that thought the story would add a little humor (at the expense of the Chinese).
It seems to me that these writers who profess to tell the history of the railroad
and decry the racism that took place are as guilty as those they condemn, perhaps
more so, for reporting these myths and false stories as fact. If they had done
their job as historians in ferreting our the truth the story would have been
much different. ... I know of no reporting of any Chinese ever refusing
to have their photograph taken. A.A. Hart as the official company photographer
for the
Central Pacific took several photographs which included
Chinese workers. If any one would just consider that cameras in the mid 19th
century were cumbersome instruments and not easy to move around and set up and
especially that it took some doing to take a photograph and get set up for the
next one. All the photos of the Last Spike ceremony were posed and it is obvious
when someone moved he wound up as a blur so everyone being photographed tried
not to move. It is also my opinion that because the Chinese were the laboring
class, as were a lot of white men, they simply did not get in many, if any, of
the photographs that day due to all the executives, managers, superintendents,
foreman, skilled
mechanics, military, women and invited and uninvited guests and
the like who wanted their picture taken. The Chinese generally were a humble
race of men and I doubt that they cared one way or another if they were not included
that day and damned sure they were not going to make an issue out of it. ...
There is no doubt that there was racial prejudice against the Chinese, they looked
different, dressed differently and behaved differently as was their culture.
They were easy to spot and every bully and low life took advantage of it. [in
New York and Boston there were signs
on public places "No Irish allowed"]. So what is new. Don't we still have that
kind of a problem in the world today? I believe that if Ms. Ogborn and others
would read the 1877 Senate Hearings by the Joint Special Committee to Investigate
Chinese Immigration, Report No. 689 and especially the testimony of
Charles Crocker and James H. Strobridge they would soon get a different perspective
about the racism prevalent at that time and understand just who were the ones
that persecuted the Chinese. Their testimony also provides their definition of
what they meant by their own "prejudice's against the
Chinese." To go even further, it will be found in that Congressional Hearing
testimony accusations that the Irish Catholic [not the Irish Protestants] working
class were the worst of the worst that were forever persecuting
the Chinese laborers. I am enclosing a summary of the Chinese
participation at Promontory as taken as an extract from my manuscript of
the biography of James H. Strobridge ... I hope it will help tell the true story
of the Chinese and should provide a better understanding just how Strobridge
felt about his Chinese crews. ... a description of the events that more closely
represents the Chinese participation at Promontory. —Ed
Strobridge
> ... I doubt that very many Chinese were at Promontory, since they were primarily
graders and the grading was long completed. —Wendell Huffman
>
Over 1/2 of the Chinese were pulled back at Mormon Hill, known today as Mile
Post 562, Toano, Nev. Not many were at Promontory... Perhaps this will
help: "One pair of rails was still to be placed, and eight Celestials, in new
blue jackets and floppy trousers, stood proudly by to lay it. Unfortunately,
for their decorum and pride, the Chinese all bolted ...when they heard the word
...."SHOOT". (John H. Williams, A great and shining
road) And: "....Now's the time, Charlie! Take a shot! the word "shoot" was
all too familiar to the Mongolians...they...stampeded" (Sabin, note page
18) This is sort of like the Cape
[myth].......One guy writes a fable, and the rest follow suit. Bowman says "At
about 10:30 am the Chinese began the final grading for the last two rails, ....it
is quite likely the Chinese started a number of spikes......" Those are
the only instances that Bowman used the word "Chinese" that I can find re: the
laying of the rails. He goes on to say "...the Chinese also cut part of
a tie into mementos...whoever drove the last spike is unknown--possibly it was
one of the Chinese workmen.....Who ever drove the last....spikes is not known
but probably it was one of the Chinese
workmen." ... Ah, the Perils of History! —Chris Graves,
NewCastle, Alta Cal.
>The stereo .. Russell #539. "Chinese at
Laying Last Rail UPRR", on O.C. Smith's yellow mount. ... may be the only
photographic record of the Chinese role in the Last Rail ceremony; The view clearly
shows at least one Chinese worker and a partner with rail-laying tools appearing
to adjust the last rail laid (from the CPRR side, according to your site), with
a wooden track gauge stick still in place while 2 others look on; It could be
the only photo to surface showing the moment the last rails were actually laid.
A crowd stands behind and fans
away on both sides. UPRR Locomotive "119" is prominent in the background. A couple
of ladies are on shoulders to get a better look at the scene. ... It is also
interesting to note that: It was Russell, not Hart (CPRR's official photographer)
who took this photo. That shouldn't detract from the importance of the moment.
It is obviously carefully choreographed to feature those Chinese workers and
couldn't have occurred without the blessing of all those present, including officials
of the CPRR for whom the Chinese worked. Many caucasian observers appear to be
more than happy to to be in the background in this picture. One explanation for
it not being
taken by Hart is that the three photographers present – Hart, Russell and
Savage – apparently had worked out very specific assignments of who was
to photograph what throughout the morning. Hart took some views from a distant
vantage point during this part of the ceremony while Russell and Savage were
closer to scene
of the actual joining. —Phil Anderson,
Hermosa
Beach, CA>The famous A.J. Russell photograph could not include the Chinese workers photographed earlier participating in the joining of the rails ceremony because at the moment the famous photo was being taken it was after the conclusion of the ceremony and the Chinese workers were away from the two locomotives to dine at J.H. Strobridge's boarding car, being honored and cheered by the CPRR management.

Two
questions about FALSE RUMORS claiming the slaughter of Chinese Central Pacific
Railroad workers, an event which never happened!
> A
library patron heard a rumor that Chinese workers had been brought to America
to work on building railroads, and that as soon as the
work was completed the workers were murdered.
> I am unable to find a particular photo. It is of an extreme atrocity perpetrated
by the railroad. It was in the late 1800's and shows a very large pile of slaughtered
Chinese workers who after completing the task of building the railroad, the railroad,
in cold blood, shot them rather than pay them. This photo shows several men
with their rifles posing in front of the dead pile as someone who'd just shot
and killed a trophy buck. I know that I saw this photo. It has been years ago,
though.
The rumor that your library patron heard is
totally incorrect. The Chinese who built the transcontinental
railroad were not murdered. Instead they mostly continued building railroads,
for
example, the line from northern to southern California via the San Joaquin
Valley. Some returned to China. Regrettably, there certainly was
virulent anti-Chinese
sentiment in 19th
century California, and there were
some
riots in which Chinese were killed, but not related to the railroad
or its workers. Nineteen Chinese died in an 1871 riot in Los Angeles'
Chinatown at Calle
de los Negros, near the Plaza (which is four hundred
miles south of the first transcontinental railroad). In the 1885 Rock Springs
Massacre, an Anti-Chinese riot in Rock Springs, Wyoming, had 28 Chinese
killed, and others run out of town. There is also a commonly repeated
myth that large numbers of Chinese died building the Central Pacific
Railroad. Claims that thousands were killed appear
to be wildly inaccurate –
we
have not been able to find documentation of more than about 50 casualties
resulting from the CPRR construction.
It is unfortunate that such rumors abound, but perhaps this results in
part from the paucity of information, as no first hand accounts of the
Chinese railroad workers' experiences are known to exist.
The reason that you have not
been able to find such an image on the CPRR Museum website is that this
rumored event never happened on the Central Pacific Railroad! (But see
below.) To the contrary, a reporter for
the San Francisco Newsletter, May 15th, 1869, described the
final moments of the celebration at Promontory:
" J.H. Strobridge, when the work was all over, invited the Chinese who had
been brought over from Victory for that purpose, to dine at his boarding car.
When
they entered, all the guests and officers present cheered them as the chosen
representatives of the race which have greatly helped to build the road....a
tribute they well deserved and which evidently gave them much pleasure."
After the completion of the transcontinental railroad, many of the same Chinese
workers continued working for the railroad as
the Southern
Pacific RR built south to Los Angeles.Perhaps you are mistakenly thinking of
the "The
Massacre of the Chinese at Rock Springs, Wyoming," an actual massacre
of Chinese miners, not railroad workers, which was illustrated
in Harper’s Weekly, 26 September 1885, p. 637, by artist
T. de Thul from photographs by C.A. Booth. "This
coal mining town was the site of the 'Rock Springs Massacre' in 1885, a
savage labor riot in which white miners killed at least 25 Chinese immigrants
and chased hundreds more into the countryside. Federal troops restored order
and remained in Rock Springs until 1898." Or perhaps you are thinking
of the southern California Los
Angeles Chinese Massacre
of 1871 which was the first riot in Los Angeles, but also not related to
northern California CPRR
railroad workers. One website reports (quoting Colonel George M. Totten) that
in 1854 there was a mass
suicide of Chinese Coolie laborers on the Panama Railroad following a tropical
fever outbreak and an ill advised decision to abruptly cut off the workers' opium
supply,
but
primary
sources would need to be verified.

Where
there railroad price wars?
"The expansion of railways through Southern California in the 1880s prompted
the calculated promotion of the region as a healthy, comfortable place to make
a home. In the middle of the decade, there was even a price war for passenger
travel, and fare for a ticket from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific dropped
to $25.00." [California:
Magnet for Tourists and Home Buyers, Library of Congress]
"During the 1870s the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad
engaged in a bitter price war, each trying to drive the other out of business.
To that end, William Vanderbilt, the president of the New York Central, decided
to invade the Pennsylvania Railroad's territory by building an alternate route
to Pittsburgh." The construction of a second rail line to Pittsburgh was
ultimately abandoned and became part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike which uses
some of its tunnels. [William Vanderbilt's
Folly - Origins of the Pennsylvania Turnpike]
Also see Re-Assessing
Tom Scott, the 'Railroad Prince.'
There is also apparently a railroad
game which includes price wars
However, anti-competitive behavior
was also an issue.

If
someone was travelling from New York City to San Francisco in 1871, what station
would they leave from? What is known about Emigrant Trains?The only depot in Manhattan in 1871 was Grand Central (New York Central) which
opened that year. All others were in located in Jersey City, Hobeken, and Weehawken.
Passengers took ferries across the Hudson River to to New Jersey to reach them.
—Bruce C. Cooper

The 1873 Wood's Illustrated Hand-Book to New York includes ferry
information as follows:

For Hoboken, New Jersey, foot of Barclay street, North River. Barclay street
runs out of Broadway westerly. Take Broadway and 7th Avenue cars.
Also for Hoboken, foot of Christopher street, from 5 A.M. to 8 P.M. every
15 minutes. From 8 to 12 P.M. every 20 minutes. ...
For Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, Jersey City Ferry foot of Cortlandt
street, North River.

"MONDAY. - It was, if I remember rightly, five o'clock when we were
all signalled to be present at the Ferry Depot of the railroad. An emigrant
ship had arrived at New York on the Saturday night, another on the Sunday
morning, our own on Sunday afternoon, a fourth early on Monday; and as there
is no emigrant train on Sunday a great part of the passengers from these four
ships was concentrated on the train by which I was to travel. There was a
babel of bewildered men, women, and children. The wretched little booking-office,
and the baggage-room, which was not much larger, were crowded thick with emigrants,
and were heavy and rank with the atmosphere of dripping clothes. Open carts
full of bedding stood by the half-hour in the rain. The officials loaded each
other with recriminations. A bearded, mildewed little man, whom I take to
have been an emigrant agent, was all over the place, his mouth full of brimstone,
blustering and interfering. It was plain that the whole system, if system
there was, had utterly broken down under the strain of so many passengers.

My own ticket was given me at once, and an oldish man, who preserved his
head in the midst of this turmoil, got my baggage registered, and counselled
me to stay quietly where I was till he should give me the word to move. I
had taken along with me a small valise, a knapsack, which I carried on my
shoulders, and in the bag of my railway rug the whole of Bancroft's History
of the United States, in six fat volumes. It was as much as I could carry
with convenience even for short distances, but it insured me plenty of clothing,
and the valise was at that moment, and often after, useful for a stool. I
am sure I sat for an hour in the baggage- room, and wretched enough it was;
yet, when at last the word was passed to me and I picked up my bundles and
got under way, it was only to exchange discomfort for downright misery and
danger.

I followed the porters into a long shed reaching downhill from West Street
to the river. It was dark, the wind blew clean through it from end to end;
and here I found a great block of passengers and baggage, hundreds of one
and tons of the other. I feel I shall have a difficulty to make myself believed;
and certainly the scene must have been exceptional, for it was too dangerous
for daily repetition. It was a tight jam; there was no fair way through the
mingled mass of brute and living obstruction. Into the upper skirts of the
crowd porters, infuriated by hurry and overwork, clove their way with shouts.
I may say that we stood like sheep, and that the porters charged among us
like so many maddened sheep- dogs; and I believe these men were no longer
answerable for their acts. It mattered not what they were carrying, they drove
straight into the press, and when they could get no farther, blindly discharged
their barrowful. With my own hand, for instance, I saved the life of a child
as it sat upon its mother's knee, she sitting on a box; and since I heard
of no accident, I must suppose that there were many similar interpositions
in the course of the evening. It will give some idea of the state of mind
to which we were reduced if I tell you that neither the porter nor the mother
of the child paid the least attention to my act. It was not till some time
after that I understood what I had done myself, for to ward off heavy boxes
seemed at the moment a natural incident of human life. Cold, wet, clamour,
dead opposition to progress, such as one encounters in an evil dream, had
utterly daunted the spirits. We had accepted this purgatory as a child accepts
the conditions of the world. For my part, I shivered a little, and my back
ached wearily; but I believe I had neither a hope nor a fear, and all the
activities of my nature had become tributary to one massive sensation of discomfort.

At length, and after how long an interval I hesitate to guess, the crowd began
to move, heavily straining through itself. About the same time some lamps
were lighted, and threw a sudden flare over the shed. We were being filtered
out into the river boat for Jersey City. You may imagine how slowly this filtering
proceeded, through the dense, choking crush, every one overladen with packages
or children, and yet under the necessity of fishing out his ticket by the
way; but it ended at length for me, and I found myself on deck under a flimsy
awning and with a trifle of elbow-room to stretch and breathe in. This was
on the starboard; for the bulk of the emigrants stuck hopelessly on the port
side, by which we had entered. In vain the seamen shouted to them to move
on, and threatened them with shipwreck. These poor people were under a spell
of stupor, and did not stir a foot. It rained as heavily as ever, but the
wind now came in sudden claps and capfuls, not without danger to a boat so
badly ballasted as ours; and we crept over the river in the darkness, trailing
one paddle in the water like a wounded duck, and passed ever and again by
huge, illuminated steamers running many knots, and heralding their approach
by strains of music. The contrast between these pleasure embarkations and
our own grim vessel, with her list to port and her freight of wet and silent
emigrants, was of that glaring description which we count too obvious for
the purposes of art.

The landing at Jersey City was done in a stampede. I had a fixed sense of
calamity, and to judge by conduct, the same persuasion was common to us all.
A panic selfishness, like that produced by fear, presided over the disorder
of our landing. People pushed, and elbowed, and ran, their families following
how they could. Children fell, and were picked up to be rewarded by a blow.
One child, who had lost her parents, screamed steadily and with increasing
shrillness, as though verging towards a fit; an official kept her by him,
but no one else seemed so much as to remark her distress; and I am ashamed
to say that I ran among the rest. I was so weary that I had twice to make
a halt and set down my bundles in the hundred yards or so between the pier
and the railway station, so that I was quite wet by the time that I got under
cover. There was no waiting-room, no refreshment room; the cars were locked;
and for at least another hour, or so it seemed, we had to camp upon the draughty,
gaslit platform. I sat on my valise, too crushed to observe my neighbours;
but as they were all cold, and wet, and weary, and driven stupidly crazy by
the mismanagement to which we had been subjected, I believe they can have
been no happier than myself. I bought half-a-dozen oranges from a boy, for
oranges and nuts were the only refection to be had. As only two of them had
even a pretence of juice, I threw the other four under the cars, and beheld,
as in a dream, grown people and children groping on the track after my leavings.
At last we were admitted into the cars, utterly dejected, and far from dry.
For my own part, I got out a clothes-brush, and brushed my trousers as hard
as I could till I had dried them and warmed my blood into the bargain; but
no one else, except my next neighbour to whom I lent the brush, appeared to
take the least precaution. As they were, they composed themselves to sleep.
I had seen the lights of Philadelphia, and been twice ordered to change carriages
and twice countermanded, before I allowed myself to follow their example."

New York City Railroad Depots, 1899 Mapfrom Rand McNally City of New York Guide

New York City 1904 Map showing Railroad Lines

Many travellers continued their trip across
the continent via Chicago. "For
Chicago, the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 ushered in an
era of unprecedented growth with four major lines to the Union Pacific, three
more than any other city. In addition to the Chicago & North Western, these lines
were the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy, and the Illinois Central. As a result, Chicago became
the nation's most important 'jumping off' place for millions of people migrating
west over the next fifty years."

Underwood & Underwood
Stereoview detail. Pennsylvania
Railroad Pier, New York City, 1902.
From
the Washington Building near Battery Park looking west across North River
and Bay to Jersey City.

... Later, the boy was told that an emigrant
train from the West would arrive at two o'clock and there when it stopped
to solicit
business for
the house. This particular train had been put on to give early settlers
in California a chance to go East for the first time by rail at reduced rates.
It was, therefore, unusually well patronized. There was a bitter rivalry
between the railroad eating-house and the Major's establishment, and bad
feeling had existed for a long time. It seems the railroad
company owned all the land for two hundred feet on each side of the track,
and the Major had been warned to keep off. This he refused to do, and the
company
had sent out a detective and gunman from Omaha to prevent trespassing. He and
the Major met one day, and the latter came away with a bullet in his arm. This
explained his keeping the arm in the sling.
The Major, therefore, cautioned the boy to "keep his eyes peeled" and be
on the lookout for the runner from the Railroad House. By good luck the train
stopped directly in front of the Major's on this day, and as a result the receipts
were $147, an unusually good amount.
That night, when the time came for retiring, the boy asked Mrs. L---- where
he would find a bed. She turned on him with disgust.
"Where are your blankets?" she asked. Since the previous job had made blankets
a necessity, he was well equipped, and soon produced them; whereupon the woman
opened a door, and said, "Here's your room." Not a single article
of furniture was in the room, not even a chair; but the blankets were rolled
out and, thankful for the job, the boy accepted the
situation and slept peacefully. The next morning he got an early start in the
store with brooms and dusters, and this routine continued for a week or more.
The Railroad House, dissatisfied with their share of patronage, about that
time reduced the price of meals from $1.00 to 75 cents. With great disgust
the Major met the price, but in a few days he had more cause for complaint, for
he was startled to hear: "This way to the Railroad House, best meals for
25 cents." ...

Tommy Meehan comments further about Emigrant Trains: " ...
From articles in the Railroad
Gazette and
from the Erie Railroad Employees Magazine I learned that in the
Port of New York
most
if
not
all passenger railroads maintained passenger traffic agents at Ellis
Island. [The "Ellis Island ... facility was closed for three
years
following a disasterous fire the night of 15 June 1897. During the interim
period all processing was out of the Barge Office at the Battery." notes
John Minke, of Carmichael, CA]
They
weren't there to solicit ridership, however, the Eastern
railroads (including PRR, CNJ, Erie, DL&W, LV and, I think the West
Shore but not NYC&HR) formally divided the traffic on a percentage
basis. The agents were there to assemble passengers into trainload
groups, get them loaded onto vessels ( ... ferries ... ), get their
baggage checked and shepherd them to the appropriate terminal. In the early years,
1850s
to about 1875 or so, I believe the trains were scheduled, though in
most cases only persons holding immigrant tickets could board them.
On the Erie the 'Immigrant Train' (I've seen it spelled both ways)
was the last long-haul passenger train to operate through the
Piermont terminal after the changeover to Exchange Place in 1853.
After the huge increase in immigration from about 1890 until ... 1915 or so,
plus the uncertainties of the immigration process, at least on the Erie I don't
think
the trains were scheduled. In
addition the Erie immigrant trains of the later years operated from a
special track at Pavonia Terminal in Jersey City, located north of
the regular passenger concourse.
... Erie employees were regularly
reminded via the company magazine that the immigrants provided good
business to the road and were entitled to be treated with respect and
dignity at all times. ... " [from the R&LHS Newsgroup]

Dan Cupper,
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania comments that " ... during the
immigration wave of the 1890s and afterward, PRR had a very considerable
emigrant trade. The company went so far as to employ a full-time staff
translator/troubleshooter who sometimes accompanied the travelers.
In some cases, PRR ran solid emigrant trains as extras but for the most
part, emigrants traveled in separate coaches coupled to No. 3, the
Pacific Express, which left Jersey City between 7-9 p.m. (actual
departure time varied by that much over a span of years), hit Altoona
just after daybreak, Pittsburgh around 1 p.m., and Chicago the next
morning at 7 or so. Various timetables show connections for Cleveland
and Columbus but not Indianapolis or St. Louis. You can find evidence of
the use of this train for emigrant travel in the Altoona newspapers
(i.e., reports such as 'Three cars of emigrants were attached to No. 3
this morning. They were mostly Italians.') I don't know how early No. 3
began to carry emigrant cars, but the train existed at least as early as
1879.
As for what influenced emigrant's choice of route, the evidence insofar
as PRR is concerned points specifically to three influences:
1. The railroad employed a force of sales agents who attempted to direct
passengers to the PRR. In a 1924 document, the railroad published photos
of five men with the caption 'Pennsylvania Railroad Passenger
Representatives who Meet Incoming Steamships at the Docks in New York.'
Each wore a bowler hat with the railroad name appearing on the band. The
publication listed 29 steamship companies whose vessels these men would
meet.
2. The railroad's own internal investigation in the 1920s into the
origin of its keystone logo turned up the fact that one of its earliest
uses was on a placard advertising the PRR to arriving emigrants. Of
course, few could read English, but the idea was to use the keystone
shape as a brand identifier.
3. Many emigrants gave verbal testimony to the fact that they were
traveling to reach family or friends who had already emigrated to the
United States and settled. Thus, the location of these prior emigres
dictated the choice of route. Western Pennsylvania, with its heavy
concentration of eastern and southern Europeans working in the iron,
steel, and coal industries, made PRR a preferred route for many of these
travelers. The family members or friends may, in fact, have sent for
them – i.e., sent money home to pay their fare for passage to the New
World, and, of course, they would have sent instructions on where to
join them and what route to take to get there." [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

Adrian Ettlinger summarizes that " ... some emigrant service
was ...chartered trains (which would have run as extras), there was also
some
emigrant service
which consisted
of emigrant cars attached to
regular trains. ... an emigrant passenger would have either inquired
at a ticket office and been advised as to which trains he/she could ride,
or solicited at the immigration station (in 1880 ... this would have
been Castle Garden rather than Ellis Island). And, obviously, eastern roads,
both the PRR and the Erie, did a lot of emigrant business.
... an independent traveler ... would have traveled as an individual
on whatever emigrant accommodations she could have found. ... It does seem apparent
that, while the great majority of emigrant
passengers may have under a 'group arrangement' organized by companies that
specialized in the 'emigrant forwarding' business, it does certainly appear
that any individual who wanted to save money and 'rough it' could buy an
emigrant class ticket and travel in that manner. ...
Robert Louis Stevenson, from Kyle's info, obviously traveled on the
Burlington ... the Q's first
route into Omaha was somewhat circuitous, but ... by 1880
there had been put in a more direct connection into Council Bluffs on the
east side of the Missouri. Curious as to how the three routes competed, I
checked out an 1880 Official Guide, and it's remarkable how close they
were as
to
their fastest train schedules. All three had 'expresses' which left Chicago
at 12:30 PM. The Northwestern and Rock Island both had scheduled arrivals in
Council Bluffs at 9:15AM, and the Burlington's was 9:20. The Rock Island
shows a 9:50 arrival time in Omaha, the Northwestern 9:55. The Burlington
shows an arrival at 'U. P. Transfer' at 9:30. Perhaps a ploy by the
Burlington to look faster. I'd assume U. P. Transfer was on the east side
of the river.
Which leads to a further question. I'd mentioned previously how Maury
Klein in his UP history describes the 'Omaha Bridge Transfer' which resulted
from an inability of the railroads and the cities of Omaha and Council
Bluffs to agree on where the transfer point would be, so that the advantages
of the bridge were seriously compromised for a time, in that two transfers
were needed, just as had been the situation with the ferry. This situation
seems to have prevailed until 1875, when a Federal Court ruling, upheld by
the Supreme Court, declared that the bridge was an integral part of the UP,
and the UP's eastern terminus was in Council Bluff. The 1880 guide shows
two UP trains per day originating in Council Bluffs, and Northwestern and
Burlington trains terminating in Omaha. Klein describes how those two roads
paid tolls to the UP for use of the bridge, but the Burlington objected, so
terminated its trains at 'UP Transfer.' There did not appear to be any close
connections in Omaha, (or Council Bluffs for the Q), so passengers had at
minimum a few hours layover." [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

Chris Baer explains that: "The PRR was definitely running
emigrant trains as late as the mid-1880s, as
Railroad Gazette notes they had cut the emigrant fare to $1 to Chicago
during the Trunk Line rate wars of the period. The PRR had emigrant trains
from at least the very early 1850s and had an Emigrant Agent who traveled
abroad to solicit business. The early emigrant trains are listed in the
timetables published in Philadelphia newspapers, indicating that they
probably did some business carrying people who had already been in the
country at least a while but wanted to go west. They appear to have gone
no farther than Pittsburgh, where emigrants would have a choice of
steamboats and other connections. Even the transporting companies on the
Main Line of Public Works that preceded the PRR advertised emigrant fares.
As has been mentioned already, it would appear that these trains ceased to
be advertised in domestic newspapers, possibly by the time of the 1873-79
depression which reduced immigration, as well as in public
timetables. They may have been listed as second class trains in employee
timetables, but I have never seen any from this period. Later, they may
have run irregularly as extras.
The PRR's emigrant business was always handled at Jersey City, since after
the Immigration Station was moved from Castle Garden at the Battery to
Ellis Island, people could run directly to the station by boat without
going into the city. There was an emigrant waiting room in one of the
piers adjacent to the PRR station at least as late as the 1910s.
The PRR's book form Lines West employee timetable in the late 1890s and
early 1900s advertises occasional trains for homesteaders, presumably from
the near Midwest, who wish to relocate to the Plains, Oklahoma,
etc. Trains for immigrants from Europe must have been advertised in
special flyers and handbills that were distributed in ports. Of course,
the PRR had a special relationship with the American Line and the Red Star
Line (International Navigation Company)." [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

Bernie Sennstrom wrote that:
"Emigrant train service dates back to the old New York & Erie
Railroad. In more recent times (1880s and later) the Erie Railway, New York,
Lake
Erie & Western and Erie Railroad continued the service. The Chicago &
Atlantic owned eleven emigrant cars Nos. 101-111 built by Jackson & Sharp
in 1883. When the Chicago & Erie succeeded the C&A, the emigrant cars were
renumbered 2051-2061. The NYLE&W numbered its emigrant cars Nos. 600-675
but there were only 24 cars in that series. When the Erie Railroad took
over the C&E and NYLE&W it renumbered the cars to 900-949, but there were
only 20 cars in the series in 1896. The roster of emigrant cars decreased
over time until 1914 when remaining emigrant cars were scrapped.
The emigrant cars ran through over the NYLE&W, NYP&O and C&A all
the way to Chicago from Jersey City. There were no special emigrant trains
I'm
aware of. Emigrant cars were attached to regular through passenger trains.
Also, I don't believe the NYP&O owned any emigrant cars."

Kyle Williams Wyatt remarks that "I believe it was in the
1890s that Pullman introduced their Tourist Cars to tap into this middle
class
market.
Pullman
used both downgraded
Pullman cars
and purpose built cars. These new cars were very plain with little decoration
– but did have somewhat more comfortable amenities than the emigrant cars
–
for instance the seats were padded. There were even some on the D&RG." [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

Charles Nordhoff wrote in the May, 1872 issue of
Harper's New Monthly Magazine:
"The regular route runs from New York [via
Ferry to Jersey City], by way of Philadelphia and Pittsburg, to Chicago
– this is called the [Pennsylvania Railroad's] Pittsburg and Fort Wayne
road – thence
to Omaha, either by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Chicago and
Northwestern,
or
the Chicago and Rock Island. ..."

How
many miles of track are there in the world?
According to railwaystation.com, "In
1937 there were 788,672 miles of railroad in the world."
What
can you tell me about the locomotive that sank? In the PBS documentary, they
refer to a locomotive for the CPRR that sank in the Hudson River on it's way
to California ...PBS
American Experience
- Transcontinental Railroad:
"WENDELL HUFFMAN: Huntington kept
saying, build faster. Build with the devil behind you and heaven ahead of you.
Build.
Build.
Build.
NARRATOR: Speed was never easy for the Central Pacific. Everything – from locomotives
to rails to spikes – still had to be built at iron works in the east and then
sailed around the tip of South America to the San Francisco docks, loaded onto
steamboats and shipped up the Sacramento River. Schedules rarely held.
Much needed spikes, rails, and rail-chairs sat under becalmed sails; a locomotive
sank in the Hudson River, parts of another in San Francisco Bay. Rail fell overboard
into the Sacramento River. Shipments that made it to the Sacramento's docks were
packed onto trains for a perilous ride forward to the work crew."

Railroads Shipped by Sea by
Wendell Huffman states:
"While a handful of locomotives was carried inland on river steamboats or
barges, the vast majority were carried on schooners. Although sailing across
the bay
and delta and up the Sacramento River presented far fewer hazards than sailing
around Cape Horn, this endeavor was not without its occasional mishap. Due to
accidents, at least one load of rail ended up in the bay, and another load was
lost into the Sacramento River.[55] The sloop Willie capsized in the Carquinez
Strait in February 1869 with a load of parts for CP Nos. 121, 131, and 135, but
all was salvaged.[56] (Earlier, an unidentified locomotive sank with a lighter
in the Hudson River.[57]) The crew of the schooner Columbia, delivering 3,000
ties to Sacramento from the California coast, had to throw a third of their load
overboard to save themselves in a strong gale encountered while still at sea.[58]"[57] Huntington to E. B. Crocker, 21 March 1868, HCSU.

> Wendell Huffman additionally comments that:
The information I have regarding the locomotive going into the Hudson River comes
from a letter from C.P.Huntington to E.B. Crocker of 21 March 1868. He says
merely: "One
of our locomotives sank at the dock at Jersey City last night. It was insured.
It was on a lighter. Yours truly."
I do not know which locomotive it was, but it was undoubtedly one of the locomotives
delivered from the factories in 1868 prior to March 21. The possibilities are:
64, 65, 66, 80, 81, and 84. These locomotives (shipped as kits in a multitude
of crates) came to New York harbor from builders in East Boston, Patterson
NJ, and Schenectady, NY. Most likely all came by "lighter" – either
coastal schooners or canal boats.
These locomotives were invoiced as followed: 80 on February 13, 64 on February
20, 65 and 84 on February 29, 81 on March 5, and 66 on March 14. Presumably
these were the dates they left the factories. Perhaps the 66 should be removed
from
the list of possibilities – depending upon how long we imagine it took to carry
a locomotive from Boston to New York. The 64, 80, 81, and 84 departed New York
harbor on the "Prima Donna" on April 4; the 65 sailed on the "Fleetford" on
April 7; and the 66 went on the "Favorita" on April 22. It doesn't
appear that any of these engines was long delayed between factory and ship.
Since the mishap
occured on 20 March, the locomotive was possibly one being loaded on the "Prima
Donna", and perhaps because of the accident it missed sailing and was
the one (the 65) which departed on the "Fleetford" a few days later.
But I think that is reading too much into the scant data.
In any event, no locomotive invoiced during this period failed to depart New
York for California. The locomotive is not still on the bottom of the Hudson
River. Certainly salvage operators of that era had the capability to retrieve
items from shallow waters, and they clearly did so with whichever locomotive
took an unscheduled bath.

Coast-to-coast
sleeping cars in the USA.– Transcontinental trains and sleepers
in
the USA.
The May 1955 issue of the Official Guide lists the following coast-to-coast sleeping
cars in the USA.

Pennsylvania Limited westbound and the General eastbound: one car daily,
operating on alternate days in the California Zephyr and the City of San Francisco.
Chicagoan westbound and Commodore Vanderbilt eastbound and the City of San Francisco:
one car on alternate days.
Commodore Vanderbilt-California Zephyr: one car on alternate days.
California Zephyr: one car daily, alternating as above on the NYC and PRR.
City of San Francisco: one car daily, alternating as above on the NYC and PRR.

All the cars were 10 roomettes, 6 double bedrooms, except one of the cars on
the
20th Century Limited-Super Chief and the car on the 20th Century Limited-Broadway
Limited, which were 4 compartment, 4 double bedrooms, 2 drawing room. Noteworthy
is that the Super Chief carried four coast-to-coast sleeping cars, half of its
sleeping car complement. ... there was considerable layover time in Chicago.
Passengers
could stay in the car, but would probably have to supply their own lunch. Consequently
I would suspect that most passengers would take the time to visit Chicago. The
major advantage to the through cars was that passengers could leave your baggage
in the car, as advertised in the Guide.

There were also through cars between New York, Washington and Texas, using the
Penn Texas on the PRR and the National Limited on the B&O, and the Texas
Eagle
on the MP-T&P and the Texas Special on the SLSF-MKT.

... the ... article:
Tower, Richard L. Jr.; "Transcontinental Trains – Close, but No Cigar",
in "Trains Classic '99" (Kalmbach 1999), pp. 30-39 &92 ... documents
various sleeping car lines which over the years crossed the Chicago-Mississipi
barrier,
and attempts since 1945 to
create a true transcontinental train.
... "Trains Classic," originally intended to be an annual,
metamorphosed into "Classic Trains," now published quarterly.
—Ken Heard[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]What
was name of the line(s), such as Twentieth Century Limited, etc., that
ran from San Francisco to Utah and points east via the Sierras in 1919?
The main long run trains operated by the SP in 1919 from San Francisco
via the Sierra route to Utah and points east were:

The Pacific Limited (TR #19 & #20) SF-CHI via SP-UP-CNW (Note:
This train operated east of Omaha via the Milwaukee RR from April, 1913
to June, 1918, and also from Nov., 1920 to Sept, 1930, when it was again
returned to the CNW until Oct. 1947.) This line operated from 1869
to 1913 under the names of the China & Japan Fast Mail (TR #s 3&6),
the Atlantic & Western Express (TR #s 4&5), and the Atlantic &
Pacific Express (TR #s 3, 4, 5 & 6).

The San Francisco Limited (TR #5 & #10) SF-CHI via SP-UP-CNW began
operation in 1913. Westbound train (#10) was suspended in July, 1918,
and Eastbound (#5) was suspended in January, 1919, because of the War.
These trains did not return to service until June, 1929.

The 20th Century Ltd, however, did not go to San Francisco. It was
the NY Central's all Pullman train from New York to Chicago. —Bruce
C. Cooper

While the Twentieth Century Limited ran New York-Chicago via the New
York Central, during the late 40s and the 1950s it carried at least one
San Francisco Pullman.
This service was also offered by the Century's eastern competitor: the
Pennsylvania Railroad's Broadway Limited.
By the mid-1950s both the Century and the Broadway carried California
Pullmans: San Francisco and Los Angeles destinations alternating. SF
via CNW-UP-SP, LA via AT&SF. —John Williamson

If
someone were to travel from the Midwest to Los Angeles circa 1931, what train
or trains would he be likely to take?
A train traveler from the midwest to Los Angeles in 1930 would be most
likely to take the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad's "Chief", its daily
extra fare train from Chicago to Los Angeles, which began service on
November 14, 1926, replacing the "California Limited" which had provided
this service since 1892. (Additional weekly "Super Chief" service was added
to this route in May, 1936, and the "El Capitan" made its first run in
February, 1938.) A midwest traveler could board the "Chief" at its origin
in Chicago or easily connect with it via other roads in Kansas City. If a
traveler wished to travel west through St. Louis he could ride on the
"Frisco" road (St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad) and connect with the
"Chief" in Albuquerque, NM. —Bruce C. Cooper

How
did the surveyors and engineers back then know what elevation to set the rail
bed at especially when the rails followed parallel to a river? It
seems like they knew how high to set it to minimize the tracks being covered
by flood waters when a river would flood. Without historical data of river floods
(like we have today) how did they know the elevation they chose was high enough
to avoid say a 100-year flood if they did not know what a 100-year flood was?
> They didn't know – all they could do is guess, with so little history
to base it on, and they had little thought to how agriculture and timbering
would affect the streams. Correspondence of the Casement Brothers of the Union
Pacific
is
full of dismay as the Missouri, the Platte, the Green, the Weber, and feeder
streams took them by surprise and washed away their work. Even at the end
there was a furious debate over how closely they could approach Great Salt
Lake to avoid just the sort of rare catastrophe you mention. The Central Pacific,
too,
had its own problems in the Sierra with unanticipated washouts just as it
did with record-breaking snows, spring mudslides, etc. Drier Nevada and Utah
posed a few problems as one could look at a dry, dead creekbed not realizing
that one weekend out of every five years it would suddenly overflow and
wreck a culvert or erase a stretch of grade. ... —David Bain
> The bad news, they didn't know. This can be validated by the loss of rail
and roadbed in 1865 on the North side of Smart Ridge, when a snowslide took
out three hundred feet of bed and rail. To keep this from happening again,
a stone wall was constructed along the rail bed (yes, they just filled it in
and reused it); this stone wall is still in place – it measures about 100
feet long, 15 feet high, and four feet thick. —G J Chris Graves, NewCastle,
AltaCal'a
> Trial and error. Or, if they were lucky, trial and success.
I'm sure it was more art than science, but I would think that the more successful
engineer took time to study the landscape. Signs of stream erosion were no doubt
telling. However, the less frequent the flooding, the more subtle the signs.
I think in many cases, the engineers had no idea. They did the best they could,
and they went back and rebuilt the line as needed. Or, as in the case of the
original California Pacific line from Knights Landing on the Sacramento River
to Marysville, they just decided they really didn't need the railroad across
the swamp all that much.
—Wendell Huffman
> I'm not certain they really did know. There were usually contingency plans
for re-routing over another carrier, if they didn't happen to be in the same
place. And not just for floods but for blizzards as well. Trains were often
delayed in the wintertime when there were heavy snows. There are many recorded
instances. Had the term "100 year flood" even been invented in 1865???
David can speak the transcontinental construction, but I remember reading
about the tracks being washed out in the Platte Valley several times causing,
to them, serious delays.
The SPLASL through
Meadow Valley got washed away twice, seriously, before they
got the tracks relocated high enough. So even by the turn of the 20th Century
there wasn't much in the way of flood data from which to draw.
Kansas City got flooded a lot, depending on your definition of a lot. I think
you put up with the annoyance of occasional flooding because the flat route
was year in and year out the best route.
The 1951 and 1952 Kansas and Missouri River floods rerouted traffic for a long
time and not just around Kansas City. —Don
Snoddy

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked
by his friends." —Oscar
Wilde"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great
pleasure." —Clarence Darrow"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved
of it." —Mark Twain

Where
can I find the story of the train stuck in the snow?
The story
of the Southern Pacific passenger train stranded in the snow in the Sierra
Nevada mountains in 1952 after an avalanche has been told in newspaper
articles and in a book
entitled Snowbound
Streamliner by Robert J. Church. The train City of San
Francisco was stuck in the snow for three days near Yuba Pass while
heroic efforts were made to rescue the passengers in which two SPRR employees
lost their lives.
Why
was the Union Pacific railroad to begin in Omaha? Why was the Central Pacific
to begin in Sacramento?It was partly engineering and partly political. The struggle
between the north and south over where to build the railroad had been going
on since the mid 1840's when Asa Whitney began lobbying Congress.
Whitney was unsuccessful, but the Pacific
Railroad Surveys of possible routes by the army corps of topographical
engineers in the mid 1850's resulted. (In retrospect a rather pointless
fight, as essentially all the proposed transcontinental railroad routes
were soon built.) Judah and Doc Strong
had figured out a "practical route" over the Sierra Nevada mountains, and
General Dodge had located a feasible route using the Platte River basin.
Congress was able to finally approve the (first) route only after the start
of the Civil War and the resignation of the southern Senators from Congress.
Another answer would be that after years of Congressional lobbying by Judah,
the Pacific Railroad Act of 1962
signed by Lincoln which provided the bond funding said specified Sacramento
and Council Bluffs, Iowa (next to Omaha, Nebraska, across the Missouri
River).
First
Diesel Locomotive
First Diesel Locomotive
2005 marks the centennial of construction of the first diesel locomotive -
built by General Electric (electricals), American Locomotive Company (body),
and International Power Company, owners of the Corliss Engine Company (and
formerly of the Rhode Island Locomotive Works, both) in Providence, RI (Diesel
engine), .
In brief, the project came out of a meeting between E. H. Harriman and Dr.
Diesel at the 1904 St Louis Exposition. Busch (he of beer) had purchased
American rights to diesel engine development in America, and had licensed
International Power Company to develop and manufacture diesel engines. Busch
was a
sponsor of the Exposition, and a large Diesel engine provided the central
power for the Exposition (much as a large Corliss steam engine had provided
central power at the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition). Harriman was the keynote
speaker at the opening of the Exposition, and Diesel was in attendance.
Harriman invited Diesel to tour the Pacific Coast, and Diesel offered a
design for a Diesel electric locomotive for the route over Donner Pass. The
press announced the beginning of construction in Nov 1904, including details
and
an artist's cutaway view of the locomotive (a boxcab with two diesel engines
and generator sets). The trade press announced tests in April 1905 - then
nothing more. Most likely it was a failure - neither diesel engine technology
nor electrical control design had advanced far enough at that point, although
of course we know that both were solved in the coming two decades.
None-the-less, it appears a locomotive was constructed and tested (probably
at the factory). So even though it was a failure, 2005 does mark a
centennial. And it appears to have been the very first Diesel powered locomotive
with any type of power transmission constructed in the World!!
—Kyle Williams Wyatt,
Curator of History & Technology, California State Railroad Museum[from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

The following are several descriptions of the uncorroborated bet between Crocker
and Durant:

(a) "Crocker
declared his men would lay ten miles of rail in a day. Such a ridiculous
thing was scoffed at in the rival camps, which were now drawing close together.
The story is told that Vice President Durant of the Union Pacific bet $10,000
that it could not be done, and that his money was 'covered.' "

(b) "The Central Pacific authorities
declared that their men could lay ten miles in one working day if they wanted
to. Vice-president Durant, of the Union Pacific, offered to bet ten thousand
dollars that they couldn't do it. The money was covered, and April 29, 1869,
was set as the day for the race."

(d) "Crocker, in bravado and some say on
a bet, announced that on a single day, April 28, the Chinese crews would
lay ten miles of track; the "Ten Mile Day," he named it. Together
with eight Irish rail handlers, they did just that, laying ten miles and
fifty-six feet of new track, spiking 3,520 rail lengths to 25,800 wooden
ties."

(e) "The uncorroborated story runs that
Durant bet Crocker $10,000 that the Central Pacific force would not exceed
that record. In any case, Crocker was determined to beat the record of the
other road. It was close to the end of the great race of the two roads across
the country; therefore Crocker waited until the distance between the track
was so short that there was no chance for the rival road to beat the record
he hoped to make."

In
the article, "The
Last Tie," Dr.
J.
D.
B. Stillman (Overland
Monthly, Volume III San Francisco: A. Roman & Company,
July
1869, pp.77-84), describes the event as follows (and names the Irish track
layers): "Ten
miles
of
track were laid in one day; and it is worth of note, that all the rails were
taken from the trucks and deposited in their places by eight men, four on a
side. These rails weigh on an average five hundred and sixty pounds; and allowing
fifty
feet to each rail, the amount of iron borne by each man during the day of eleven
hours was seventy-four tons! This was without relay. The names of the men who
performed this feat are justly a part of this record. They were: Michael Shay,
Patrick Joyce, Thomas Dailey, Michael Kennedy, Frederick McNamara, Edward Killeen,
Michael Sullivan, and George
Wyatt."
However, the stated "five hundred and sixty pounds; and ... fifty
feet to each rail" seems inconsistent, because 560 lb./50
ft.
=
11.2
lb./ft.
=
33. 6 lb./yd. which is not correct. If this is doubled to
67.2
lb./yd.
it would be more plausible. So the weight
could be for one rail, but the length for two rails.
Then, (10 mi.*(11.2 lb./ft. x 2 rails x 5,280 ft./mi.)/(2,000 lb./ton))/8
men = 73.9 ton/man.

Perspectives vary, and one website claims: "In
1864, the Central Pacific Railroad Company was pushing construction of the
railroad from Sacramento California into the Sierra Mountains. Someone at the
Central Pacific noticed the efficient work habits of Chinese.
It was obvious that Chinese ingenuity could do the impossible, so the company
decided to experiment with a Chinese construction crew. Company managers also
did something unheard of by American managers, they adapted the empowerment leadership
style of the Chinese, giving full control and responsibility of the project
to front line workers. As a result, track laying increased until it reached a
record ten miles in one day, a record that still stands." [That is, aside
from the instigation, management, and supervision on on April 28, 1869 of the
event by Charles Crocker, Superintendent James Harvey Strobridge, Gang Foreman
George Corley, and the three Track Bosses, Horace
Hamilton Minkler, his two
Assistants,
Frank Freitis and Mike Stanton.]

Edson T. Strobridge comments: "The story of the ten miles of track laid
in one day has a number of assumptions
that really make it impossible to know the exact numbers. First of all, Stillman
wasn't there at the time and describes the event while on his way to the 'Last
Spike' ceremony at Promontory so one can only assume that he has used information
taken from the reports of others. He really didn't do too badly except for
his reporting of the rails being 50 feet in length and his estimate of 74 tons
per man. I would guess that his use of the 50' is the result of a typographical
error as he is the only one using that figure. All the other reports report
the rail lengths as 30'.
By law, rails on the Pacific Railroad could be no less that 56 lbs/yard hence
a 30 foot (10 yard) rail weighed 560 pounds. The problem was that all rails
were not the same length, they varied from as long as 30' to as short as 22' which
was acceptable under Huntington's contracts. Rail manufacturing had not developed
to the point that iron quality was good enough that every rail could be cut
to the same length and any rail the Iron Co. couldn't sell had to be re-rolled
or scrapped. Shipping was also a problem as not all available ships could handle
30' rails. James Harvey Strobridge in an interview stated '1000' tons and
'3500' rails were laid on April 28th, 1869 for a distance of ten miles and
200 feet
however
he stated that the UP Engineers measured the distance so no errors would be
made. The actual figure accepted was ten miles and 56 lineal feet of track.
3500 rails weighed on average something less than 560 lbs due the varied lengths
however assuming all rails were 30' and the weight was 560 lbs that would provide
a total weight of about 980 tons. So each of the Irish rail handlers unloaded
a total of about 122.5 tons during the 11 hours they worked.
Another way of looking at it is that the total length of rail (ten miles and
56') equaled 105,656 lineal feet divided by 30' = 3522 rails. So J.H.
Strobridge wasn't
too far off on his recollection and that depends if no side tracks were laid
for passing construction trains(which no one ever addressed) and his 3500 rails
wasn't too bad either. Throw in the possibility that all rails were not 30'
but something shorter just adds more confusion. It would be my bet that J.H.
Strobridge would probably be rolling with laughter right now if he knew of
our effort to tie down the facts to such a great detail as there was never
an exact counting of material in those days. They lost entire stacks of rail
which were not found until the snow melted. Rails were not ordered by the foot
but by the ton, shipped by the ton and counted by the rail/ton. The reporting
of the event of ten miles of track in one day was embellished by everyone who
reported the story to make it as interesting as they could. One fact that did
come out of the days story was just how much weight eight strong men could
handle in one day. One fact that was not widely reported was that it took the
work of three track bosses, H.H. Minkler, his two assistants, Frank Freitis
and Mike Stanton to make it all work. Charles Crocker gave Minkler a $500 bonus
for his efforts and I assume that he shared it with his key men.
One fact that cannot be challenged is that the rail was 56#/yd +- depending
on when it was rolled in the life of the roll. The more the roll wore, the
larger the pattern became and the more the rail weighed. ... Another fact not widely
reported was that the railroad fed 5,000 men in the one hour break for rest
and lunch."

G.J. "Chris" Graves comments: "It is my understanding
that the Irish (and their German foreman, Horace Hamilton Minkler) took the
rails from the
cart, laid them on the ties, and spiked down the
front and back of each rail. Another crew of Irish (the Chinese were
graders, not track layers [see earlier photograph]) or Mormons
completed
the spiking. ... James Harvey Strobridge writes as follows:
'Each rail was handled by eight men, four to a side. They ran it out to the edge
of the car (iron trucks), dropping it into place for the spikes too be driven,
a man for each spike. When it was down the men walked to the same spike on the
next rail, drove it and on to the next, all day.'
Track gangs, from my understanding, did not contain Chinese workers. [Graves
explains that the Chinese graders worked miles away from the track gangs who
followed; months apart in for a given location in the Sierras.]
From
the
above, and
from
[Dr.
J.
D.
B. Stillman's description],
one
can
see
that
four
men
carried
the
rail,
and
four
men spiked them down. Due to the challenges faced by mixing the Chinese and Irish/Mormon
workers, and knowing that the Chinese folks were graders, I am comfortable saying
that in the 10 miles in one day, as well as other days, the track gangs were
Anglos, and Anglos only. ... Chinese ... did not spike down the
10
miles
in
one
day"

Chris Graves' conclusion that "Chinese ... did not spike down the
10
miles
in
one
day," is based on his belief that the Chinese workers only did
grading work, which does not seem to be supported by the following information
which
indicates that Chinese in Utah
also were track workers who were expert in driving spikes:
(1) Ed
Strobridge wrote: "Since
some prominent visitors were to 'drive' a last
iron spike and, as amateurs, they would have difficulty in starting the
spikes, the Chinese started a number of them. An experienced
track worker could drive a spike in three blows, the visitors took upwards
of ten. As
Amos L. Bowsher is quoted, 'the last [iron] spike was partly driven for
Stanford and Durant by the Chinese'."
(2)
The San Francisco Chronicle, September
10, 1868 states: "At the end of track, 307 miles from Sacramento between
Mill City and Winnemucca, the train trip ended. Caxton reported 'Here we found
a very
large number of men at work – principally Chinese – laying the track....
' "
(3) Driving the Last Spike At Promontory,
1869 by J. N. Bowman, California
Historical
Society Quarterly, Vol. XXXVI, No. 2, June 1957, pp. 96-106, and
Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, September 1957, pp. 263-274, states that: "The
bulk of
the
Chinese and other workers who had completed the line by May 1 had been shunted
westward
to
improve
certain points of the line,
leaving only a few, perhaps a dozen, to do the grading, lay the ties and
drive the few spikes of the west rail, lay the east rail for
the ceremony, and replace the laurel tie. ...
The junction point was the highest point of the road in the basin and was
about 3 1/2 miles eastward of the end of the 10-mile-and-58-feet track
laid by the Chinese in 1 day of about 12 hours, ...
At about 10:30 the Chinese began the final grading for the last 2 rails,
the laying of the ties and rails, the driving of the spikes,
and the
bolting of the fishplates of the west rail. ... Also, since the visitors
were to 'drive' a last iron spike and, as amateurs, they would have had
difficulty in starting the spikes, it is quite likely that the Chinese
started a number of the iron spikes, as Bowsher stated that the last spike
was partly driven for Stanford and Durant. ...
Who drove the last spike on the last replacement is unknown – possibly
it
was one of the Chinese workmen."
(4) The
Last Spike painting appears
to show three Chinese workers, only one with a shovel. The tools held by the
other two workers perhaps indicate that they are Chinese track workers, not
graders. If it is true, as the above suggests, that Chinese spikers were in
Utah,
it places in question the logical basis for Chris Graves' conclusion
that
Chinese
could
not have
spiked
the
rails
put
in
place
by
the
8 Irishmen during the ten mile day. —CPRR.org

G.J. "Chris" Graves
replied: In a book, reprinted on
the CPRR Museum site, author Iris Chang has a great deal to say about Chinese
workers, and how
they participated on the "10 Miles in One
Day" effort. The Southern Pacific Bulletin, August, 1927, page
10, reads in part, quoting
from a report from End of Track, November 9, 1868:

"Long lines of horses,
mules and wagons were standing in the open desert near the camp train. The
stock was getting its breakfast of hay and barley. Trains
were shunting in from the west with supplies and materials for the day's
work. Foremen
were galloping here and there on horseback giving or receiving orders. Swarms
of laborers, Chinese, Europeans and Americans were hurrying to their work. On
one side of the track stood the moveable blacksmith shop where a score
of smiths were repairing tools and shoeing horses and mules. Close by
was the fully equipped harness shop where a large force was repairing collars,
traces and
other leather
equipment. To the west were the rails and line of telegraph poles stretching
back as far as the eye could reach. The telegraph wire from the last pole
was strung into the car that served as a telegraph office. To the eastward
stretched the grade marked by a line of newly distributed earth. By the
side of the grade smoked the camp fires of the blue clad laborers who could
be seen
in groups waiting
for the signal to start work. These were the Chinese, and the job of this
particular contingent was to clear a level roadbed for the track. They
were the vanguard
of the construction forces. Miles back was the camp of the rear guard–the
Chinese who followed the track gang, ballasting and finishing the road
bed. Systematic workers these Chinese–competent and wonderfully effective
because tireless and unremitting in their industry ... The rails, ties
and other material were thrown off the train as near to end of the track
was as feasible, and then the empty train was drawn back out of the way.
At this
point the rails were loaded on low flat cars, and hauled by horses to end
of track. The ties were handled in the same way.
Behind came the rail gang, who took the rails from the flat cars and laid
them on the ties. While they were doing this a man on each side distributed
spikes, two to each tie; another distributed splice bars; and a third the
bolts and
nuts by which the rails were spliced together. Two more men followed to
adjust and sent back for another load ... Back of the track builders
followed a gang with the seven more ties necessary to complete the foundation
for each rail. These were put into position and spiked by another gang,
which also leveled up the track and left it ready for the ballasters. ..."

It
is absolutely clear that the hard working Chinese laborers
were graders, not track layers! Continuing in the same publication,
on
page
11,
re:
the 10
Miles
in One Day effort:

"The rails were carried to the end of the track on little
flat cars. There four
men would seize a rail, run forward with it and drop it in place. Correspondents
and officials were standing around, watches in hand, time the various
operations. The
average time for handling a rail was 30 seconds. After the rail, came
a gang which tacked it in place with eight spikes and dropped the bolts
in place.
Then onto the next rail. Behind came a second gang which drove home
the spikes that had been started ... A spiker in those days was expected
to sink
a spike
home with three blows of the sledge ... The Alta Correspondent
... continues"It
may seem incredible, but nevertheless a fact, that the whole ten miles
of rail was handled and laid down by this day by eight white men. These
men were:
Michael Shay,
Michael Kennedy, Michael Sullivan, Patrick Joyce, Thomas Dailey, George
Wyatt, Edward Kieleen and Fred McNamara. These
eight Irishmen in one day handled more than 3500 rails–1,000
tons of iron."

Note please, ... no mention of Chinese workers in these rail gangs,
which makes me wonder where Ms. Chang got her information? Also, William
Carton and Peter Egan gauged the rail at 4 feet, 8 and 1/2 inches. Thank you
for the opportunity to perhaps shed more light on this most interesting subject. —G
J Chris Graves, NewCastle, AltaCal'a

Strobridge & Minkler at "Victory Camp – 10 miles
of track
laid
in one day."

The above photograph was taken at the time of the event. The UPRR
has photographs taken years later of a commemorative sign
erected next to the track at the location where ten miles were built in
one day.
"Another
thing in which [Strobridge] took satisfaction was the laying of ten miles of
rail in one day. The rival railroad gangs had made successively
larger records until the Union Pacific made an unusually large one and
that record was apparently to be allowed to stand. Mr. Crocker asked Strobridge
if he was beaten. The latter answered that while he felt he could exceed
what was done he was willing to let the Union Pacific record stand, as
he could see no good to be gained and the cost would be heavy. Mr. Crocker
expressed the wish to have the attempt made. Accordingly Strobridge made
his arrangements and actually laid ten and a quarter miles of rail in one
day and ran a locomotive over the track. This was done, however, when the
ends of the track were so close together that the other side had no opportunity
even to attempt to do better. That record stands, so far as I know, the
best that has ever been made. The rail was fifty-four pounds and one set
of men handled the entire amount laid that day. Mr. Strobridge told me
that he had provided a second gang to relieve the first at noon, but when
the relief gang came, the first refused to quit and carried on for the
entire day." Galloway

"
By late April 1869, the tracks were only fourteen miles from a junction
with the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific forces set out to beat the
track-laying record just achieved by the Union Pacific workers. On
April 28, 1869, while a number of officers from the U. P. and the C. P.,
several newspaper correspondents, and workers from the rival camp looked
on, the Chinese and Irish work force of the Central Pacific laid 10 miles
and 56 feet of track in a little less than 12 hours, beating the old U.
P. record by more than 2 miles." Chinese
Syllabus

I
have always heard that the chinese workers were underpaid, overworked, boarded
themselves, fed themselves (as compared to others who were fed and boarded) and
suffered taunts, jealousy by other non-asian workers etc. My son says they were
paid well and life was not that bad.
What do you think. I read the testimony of many in one of your links but my son
won't have the patience to read such a huge document. What do you suggest I do
to convince him that the rosy picture taught in his school is a tad too [optimistic].
Unfortunately, the Chinese railroad workers left no written record of their experiences.
Keep in mind that the 19th century accounts, all by caucasians, are somewhat
sparse,
are influenced by the commonplace prejudices against the Chinese, and have been
embellished into myths when the stories have been retold in the later literature.
After initial skepticism, the value of the Chinese workers was clearly recognized
by the Central Pacific. In contrast to the awful treatment that the Chinese
often
experienced in 19th century California, they appear to have been better treated
by the railroad. (Two anecdotes may have some bearing on the attitudes of the
CPRR management. Stanford's wife's life was saved by a Chinese herbal doctor
in 1862 using ephedrine after her pulmonary disease was unsuccessfully treated
by
a western doctor. The CPRR had pragmatic approach, for example welcoming the
Indians and allowing them to ride the trains for free so that they remained
friendly,
instead of becoming involved in a military conflict with them as did the UPRR.)
Building a railroad through the mountains (and desert) by hand year round through
terrible winters augmented only by black powder and dangerous nitroglycerin manufactured
on site was extremely arduous labor which is hard to contemplate today –
but this applied equally to the workers of all races. Life was both very hard,
yet better than in China and elsewhere in California as reflected in the willingness
of the Chinese to come to California and voluntarily accept the employment. The
Chinese workers seem to have been well paid in gold, and only one brief strike
occurred which was over the wage rate, but the two sides were not so very far
apart. While it is true that the Chinese fed themselves, that would be of necessity,
as Chinese foods and cooking at the time were quite exotic and could not have
been provided by the western cooks. [A more subtle analysis of discrimination
generally, for example, by economist Dr. Thomas
Sowell indicates that irrational discrimination
while reprehensible, can be costly to maintain, and may fail to inflict the intended
harm when the "victims" of the discrimination culturally adopt coping
strategies including education, thrift, and entrepreneurship to overcome employment
restrictions that cause them to eventually become more successful than those
intent on causing them harm. As a result, it cannot be assumed that the prejudices
of
the majority population, however inappropriate or pervasive, (unless effectively
imposed by force of law) will necessarily determine the ultimate success of
the
minority.] In the case of the CPRR, the Chinese RR workers appear to have thrived
and made an invaluable contribution to the greatest engineering effort of the
19th century despite the prevailing prejudices. The relationship between the
Chinese workers and the CPRR, even if lacking in perfection, must have been
mutually satisfactory
in the judgment of the workers, since many of the same workers continued to work
for the same bosses when they later went on to build the rail line down the
San
Joaquin Valley south to Los Angeles. It would be misleading to impose 21st century
standards of "underpaid and overworked" – and rather ironic,
as the contribution of the transcontinental railroad to the economy in significant
part lead to the huge increase in wealth that results in the stark comparison
of conditions then and now. We're glad to hear that your school is presenting
a somewhat rosy picture as this is probably closer to the truth than the often
repeated exaggerated claims that thousands
of Chinese workers were killed or that the Chinese and Irish tried to blow up
one another (which never happened).
I
am a librarian with a patron who had heard that Chinese workers had been brought
to America to work on building railroads, and that as soon as
the work was completed the workers were murdered.
The rumor that your library patron heard is totally incorrect. The Chinese who
built the transcontinental railroad were not murdered. Instead they mostly continued
building railroads, for example, the line from northern to southern California
via the San Joaquin Valley, but thousands
of Chinese laborers returned
to Sacramento to find other
work. Some
returned to
China. Regrettably, there certainly
was virulentanti-Chinesesentiment in
19th century California, and there were
some riots in
which Chinese were killed,
but not related to the Central Pacific Railroad or its workers. Nineteen Chinese
died
in
an
1871
riot in Los Angeles' Chinatown at Calle
de los Negros, near the Plaza (which is four hundred miles south of the transcontinental
railroad). In the 1885 Rock
Springs Massacre, an Anti-Chinese riot in Rock Springs,
Wyoming, had 28 Chinese killed, and others run out of town. There is also a commonly
repeated myth that large numbers of Chinese died building
the Central Pacific Railroad. Claims that thousands were killed are exaggerated
– we have
not been able to find documentation of more than about 50 casualties resulting
from the CPRR construction in the reports of the engineers. It is unfortunate that such rumors abound,
but perhaps this results in part from the paucity of information, as no first
hand accounts of the Chinese
railroad
workers' experiences are known to exist.How
did the men drill holes into the solid granite in which black powder was placed
and how much were they paid?
They used hand drills which are like chisels which were hit with hammers to
make the holes in the rock into which the explosive black powder was placed.
It took three eight-hour shifts to drill and blast twelve inches of rock and
steel drills had to be given new edges by blacksmiths every two hours.
The Chinese were paid $30 to $35 a month in gold, while the other railroad laborers
were paid about the same but didn't have to pay for their own food.
I
am trying to find information regarding the low Tents that the railway companies
provided for the workers who built the rails and anything to give
me a description of the layout of such camps.

Are the wooden structures along the Truckee River part of the rail line?
[No, these] are the
water flumes (walled tunnels, with a floor, walls, and a roof, of wood)
that used to take water from the Truckee to the electric plant just West of
Verdi. A flood washed out the flume East of Floriston a few years back,
now just a trickle of water goes thru them. The wooden strips you saw,
consist of 2x6 strips of Douglas fir, placed 3 feet apart. The workers
walked on those strips of wood to repair the flumes, following the winter
damage. The flume begins just below Floristan, and runs to the Sierra
Pacific power generating station just West of Verdi. Overflow continues to
water some of the agricultural areas West of Reno.
In the winter, icicles hang from the flume, and are quite spectacular.
—G.J. "Chris" GravesOf the Chinese that came to the US to work on the railroad, about what
percent stayed long term to become citizens? (versus those that returned to
China, died, etc.)
When was the law revised to permit U.S. born Chinese to
become naturalized citizens? Were the Chinese that came to build the railroads
somehow compensated for their treatment since their descendents live in
a "better" country than if their ancestors had stayed in China?
Is it true that
the vast majority of those building the railroads returned to China or died without
descendents because even
though a large number of Chinese ended up in San Francisco, this is very
small compared to the numbers of laborers who came to build the railroads?
"With the discovery of gold in California in 1849, ... Hong
Kong became
a center for Chinese emigration from Guangdong Province to the United States,
helping to build Hong Kong's economy, as many of the Chinese who went to California
returned with their new-found riches." The Library
of Congress reports that "The
majority of Chinese immigrants, for example, were single men who worked for a
while and returned home." Also, the bones of many who died in
California were returned to China
for burial. Have not seen any detailed statistics regarding the CPRR railroad
workers, many of whom continued to work for example building the rail
line south
to Los
Angeles,
but see 1852
statistics. " ... until
1943, Chinese immigrants (with few exceptions)
were prevented by law from be coming naturalized citizens ... Even many of those
who
in their
final years returned to China to die left their children and grandchildren in
this country." The Chinese
Exclusion
Act of 1882 was repealed
in 1943.
While it is certainly true that the Chinese who stayed in the United States (or
their American descendants) benefited from the growing U.S. economy made possible
by the transcontinental railroad that they or their ancestors built, the benefits
to the individual railroad workers were clear and immediate, in their own judgment.
They came to "Old Gold Mountain" (San Francisco) and voluntarily chose
employment with the Central Pacific Railroad in response to advertisements, and
continued
to work for the railroad for years, because they could escape dismal circumstances
and poverty in China to earn $30 per month in gold allowing them to accumulate
wealth that was totally beyond reach if they remained in Canton. It is disingenuous
and arrogant in the extreme for modern writers to attempt to substitute their
anachronistic preferences for the choices actually made by the 19th century workers.
Building the greatest engineering project of the 19th century with manual labor
was certainly
incredibly difficult, dangerous, hard work but the Chinese workers were free
to choose and preferred this employment to all the other 19th century alternatives.
Although there was certainly severe discrimination against the Chinese in 19th
century
California, the CPRR quickly overcame their prejudices
once they hired Chinese workers and found them to be excellent. It is a myth
that the Chinese railroad workers were murdered or treated as slaves. Please
let us
know if you are aware of any 19th century primary sources that
support such claims. For example, we have seen claims that "thousands died" constructing
the railroad, but with the exception of a single short newspaper article, we
find only fairly detailed reports that suggest that perhaps
50 died. We know of no evidence that the CPRR
was indifferent to the tragic deaths of workers, much less that they intentionally
killed anyone. Claims that the Chinese railroad workers were treated like slaves
also do not seem consistent with the historical record. This website reprints
a chapter from a recent book that makes many such erroneous
claims with detailed
annotation pointing out the actual historical record. For example, the
testimony of Charles Crocker
at a Congressional inquiry regarding Chinese
immigration was that he was an abolitionist and the CPRR workers
were definitely not treated as slaves:

"Q. Were you or were you not very much opposed to negro
slavery?—A.
I was, always. I was an abolitionist from a boy. ...
Q. You were so much opposed to slavery that you would have aided a negro
to escape ?—A. If a negro slave came to my door and wanted bread he
would get it, and if he wanted a little money to help him along to freedom
he would get it.
Q. Do you or do you not believe that the Chinese immigration to this country
has the same tendency to degrade free white labor as that of negro slavery
in the South ?—A. No, sir; because it is not servile labor.
Q. It is not ?—A. It is not; it is free labor; just as free labor as
yours and mine. You cannot control a Chinaman except you pay him for it.
You cannot make any contract with him, or his friend, or supposed master,
and get his labor unless you pay for it, and pay him for it. ...
A. ... They gathered them one at a time, two,
three, four of them in a place, and got them together to make what is
called a gang, and
each gang
is numbered.
Q. Just like mules ?—A. Well, sir, we cannot distinguish China-men
by names very well.
Q. Like mules ?—A. Not like mules, but like men. We have treated them
like men, and they have treated us like men, and they are men, good and true
men.
As I say, we employed them in that way. They come together in gangs of twenty-five
and thirty, as we need them to work on a job of work, and the account is
kept with the gang, No, 1, No. 2, 25, 30, 50, 100, just as it is. Each gang
has a
book-keeper to keep the account among themselves. We have a foreman and he
keeps the account with the gang and credits them. Every night the Chinese
book-keeper,
who is one of the workmen and works in the pit along with the rest, comes
up with his book, and he says so many days for that gang, do you see? and
they count
it up and they agree, and each puts it down. Then the Chinese keep their
own accounts among themselves; but we keep an account with the gang. When
the pay-day
comes the gang is paid for all the labor of the gang, and then they divide
it among themselves.
Q. Does the same thing obtain with the white men ?—A. No, sir; we get
the individual names of the white men.
Q. You do not pay the individual Chinaman when he works for you?—A.
We pay the head-man of the gang.
Q. Some head-man ?—A. He is a laborer among them.
Q. You do not pay them in the same manner that you pay white men ?—A.
In the same manner, except that we cannot keep the names of the Chinamen;
it is
impossible. We would not know Ah Sin, Ali You, Kong Won, and all such names.
We cannot keep their names in the usual way, because it is a different language.
You understand the difficulty. It is not done in that way because they are
slaves.
Q. Is it not a kind of servile labor ?—A. Not a bit. I give you my
word of honor under oath here that I do not believe there is a Chinese slave
in this
State, except it may be a prostitute. I hear of that, but I do not know anything
about it. If you do, you know more than I do.
Q. Can a Chinaman immigrate from this State on your steamers or the Pacific
Mail Steamship Company's steamers as free as a white man can?—A. Certainly."

The Chinese workers at the Promontory joining of the rails ceremony on May
10, 1869 were celebrated according to the San Francisco Newsletter, May 15th,
1869,
that described the final moments of the celebration at Promontory:

Construction
Supt. "J.H. Strobridge, when the work was all over, invited the Chinese
... to dine at his boarding car. When they entered, all the guests and officers
present cheered them as the chosen representatives of the race which have
greatly helped to build the road ....a tribute they well deserved and which
evidently
gave them much pleasure."

Although many young Chinese men came to 19th century California to make their
fortunes with the intention to then return to their families in China, there
were about 10,000
Chinese workers on the CPRR, while the
Chinese population just of San Francisco in 1870 was 11,728, so it does not seem
that based only on the population statistics that it would be possible to
conclude that few
of the workers remained in California following the completion of the railroad.

> Yitah R (R.) Wu comments: I'm glad to hear that perhaps the Chinese weren't
treated as badly as is very commonly thought, though it would certainly seem
that they
were not treated
or paid as well as their Caucasian counterparts. I wouldn't single out anyone
in particular as being at fault in this, as it was in large part due to prevailing
social attitudes in the US, and would suspect that the number of Chinese who
came for the gold rush exceeded those who came to build the railroads.
I agree that they chose to come regardless of discriminatory laws and prejudices.
Opportunities were extremely limited in Imperial China. The dilemma raised
is similar to that of Nike, in setting workplace standards in the third world.
While we may consider the conditions brutal or substandard, for every worker
that decides to leave, a dozen are waiting to take their place. My supposition
however, is that the given the demographics (overwhelmingly male) and laws
(intermarrying, naturalization, and emigration of spouses/fiance's prohibited)
those that stayed behind after construction of the railroads had few opportunities
to leave descendents.
From the San Francisco population statistics, we see a large drop in absolute
numbers and in percent of population from the 1880/1890 census to the 1920
census. The increase
in 1930 and beyond can inferred to be new immigration since anyone of labor
age in 1880 (let's say 17 years old) would have been 67 in the 1930 census
and not likely to be having many children.
This was not a localized phenomena (i.e. they didn't move to Fremont.) -
Chinese population dropped from 105,465 in 1880 to 61,639 in 1920 This echoes
the information
on San Francisco population.
P.S. The Chinese name for California is not Gold Mountain. The name for San
Francisco, however, can be translated as "Old Gold Mountain"

Reply:
Leland H. Stanford, in a report to
Andrew Johnson, had this to say about the
Chinese on October 10, 1865:

"As a class they are quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious
and economical. Ready and apt to learn all the different kinds of work
required in railroad
building,
they soon become as efficient as white laborers. More prudent and
economical,
they are contented with less wages. We find them organized into societies
for mutual aid and assistance. These societies can count their numbers by
thousands,
are conducted by shrewd, intelligent business men who promptly advise their
subordinates where employment can be found on most favorable terms. No system
similar to slavery,
serfdom or peonage prevails among these laborers. Their wages, which are
always paid in coin each month, are divided among them by their agents who
attend to
their business according to the labor done by each person. These agents are
generally American or Chinese merchants who furnish them their supplies of
food, the value
of which they deduct from their monthly pay.
We have assurance from leading Chinese merchants that, under the just and
liberal policy pursued by the company, it will be able to procure during
the next year
not less than 15,000 laborers. With this large force the company will be
able to push on the work so as not only to complete it far within the time
required
by the Acts of Congress but so as to meet the public impatience."

J. O. Wilder, for many years a Central Pacific-Southern Pacific employee,
in an interview with the late Erle Heath, one-time Southern Pacific historian,
said:

" ... The Chinese were paid $30 to $35 in gold a month,
finding [maintaining] themselves, while the whites were paid about the
same with their board
thrown in .... "

" Men of other nationalities who are jealous of the
Chinese, because he is a more faithful worker than one of their people,
have raised such a
great outcry
about
Chinese cheap labor that they have shut him out of working on farms or
in factories or building railroads or making streets or digging sewers. ...
There is no
reason for the prejudice against the Chinese. The cheap labor cry was
always a falsehood.
Their labor was never cheap, and is not cheap now. It has always commanded
the highest market price. But the trouble is that the Chinese are such
excellent and faithful workers that bosses will have no others when they
can get them."

Consequently,
the difference in wages between caucasian and Chinese railroad laborers, if
any, seems to have been fairly small. The Chinese CPRR
workers
were responsible for their own food, but the railroad was not capable of supplying
a diet of Chinese food, as this was completely unfamiliar at the time. Small
difference in wages that may have existed could have just reflected labor market
conditions or differences in occupational categories. It seems that the Chinese
were graders, and tunnel blasters, while the caucasians were carpenters and
track
layers. Even today it is unlikely that there is uniformity in pay between these
varying job positions. Of course, since the occupations were different according
to
race, this from a modern perspective seems unfair, but because the end of track
where
the grading and blasting took place was in a different location from
the bridge and snowshed construction, and the track laying,
combined
occupation crews would not have been possible, and also likely impractical
due to the language difference. Even from a modern perspective, it is not clear
that
small
differences
in worker compensation if related to differences in location, work performed,
and dietary preferences would necessarily be considered discriminatory.
When someone makes an historical claim, the burden of factual proof is entirely
theirs – and when supporting primary source documentation is lacking there
is no need for others to attempt to disprove a conjecture. What actual primary
source
evidence have you found that the Chinese were "not treated ... as well as
their Caucasian counterparts" by the railroad?
According to the Library of Congress, there are no known surviving 19th century
Chinese accounts of their experience in California. Comparing what little we
know about their treatment by the CPRR versus the virulent anti-Chinese prejudice
expressed in 19th century newspapers, magazines, and laws, it seems far more
likely that the Chinese workers were treated well by the railroad according
to 19th century standards, and that their treatment by the railroad was much
better
and fairer than the treatment that Chinese were likely to have received generally
in 19th century California. The Central Pacific Railroad experience consequently
is an excellent example, not of discrimination, but of market forces preventing
discrimination despite the manager's prejudices
(pre-judgments) about the Chinese workers which the managers were forced by
a labor shortage to overcome,
and which
by experience they later concluded (see above) were completely erroneous.

> Yitah R (R.) Wu comments: The Brown
v. Board site supports the position that CPRR treated the Chinese better
than most Chinese were treated at the time, and that their value to the transcontinental
railroad was recognized.

However, it also indicates that
they were initially paid $25 per month and their wages were not raised to
$35 per month until after the strike. (No footnotes are listed.) There seems
to be a fair amount of conflicting information on this point. Perhaps you
have access to archived payroll records, etc indicate about pay to the
different work crews? Perhaps there was a prevailing difference in wage levels
between
CPRR and UPRR? Perhaps the other misconceptions you fight stem from confusion
with the Panama
RR or the CanadianRailroads?
Seems there's a monument
in Toronto to the Chinese railroad workers who died.

Reply:
Not sure if the CPRR Chinese workers' wages were raised after the strike as some
claim,
and if so by how much. The testimony about
the strike does not indicate a pay raise. The American
Experience website says
that the wages were not raised: "Despite their productivity,
Chinese workers were treated poorly and paid less than other workers. They
often handled
the
more
dangerous
tasks
of
carving
through granite, first with blasting powder and later with nitroglycerin. Their
reputation as laborers spread and soon they were being hired away from the
railroad. The Central Pacific raised their monthly wage to $35, but thousands
of Chinese workers went on strike, demanding $40. The Central Pacific cut off
food and supplies, then sent an intimidating posse up to the Chinese camps.
The immigrant workers backed down, accepted the $35 wage, and resumed work." The payroll
for the New Castle trestle construction, is mostly for skilled labor, but
includes one Irish laborer who was paid 95¢/day which doesn't seem much
different than Chinese. There
might be additional relevant payroll
records at the California State Railroad Museum's Library. Regarding UPRR
wages, quoting the Promontory
website: "April 22,
1868. There will be no difficulty in getting all the hands you want from one
dollar to two dollars and fifty cents a day, according to
their quality–Brigham
Young."
Have you been able to verify the reports about casualties on the other railroads
that you mentioned – using primary sources to be sure that these are not myths
similar to those made up about the CPRR?
(There is a fascinating study showing in exquisite
detail how the stories about workers dangling in woven baskets supposedly used
in the construction at Cape Horn were made up in a series of small steps by
a
succession
of authors
each embellishing upon
the fabrications of their predecessor.) For example, the web page about the
Canadian
monument describes "thousands
were seriously injured or died" building that other railroad in Canada
but then says "These
deaths often went unreported." – Any loss of life is tragic, but how
can anyone pretend to know about and especially count "unreported" deaths?

Comments regarding the book, Nameless
Builders of the Transcontinental Railroad, by William F. Chew.
... James Harvey Strobridge, the construction foreman working for "C. Crocker,
Contractor" hired 18 Chinese workers for his hay ranch in what is now Rio
Linda
in 1851.
Many of
these workers, including Ah Toy, apparently became close to Mr. Strobridge, as
the name Ah Toy appears on pay roll sheets viewed by Mr. Chew. These payroll
sheets, according to Mr. Chew are dated in the period prior to March 20, 1865
when most historians agree that the CPRR began hiring Chinese in large numbers.
In his book, Mr. Chew relates that Chinese workers were active in the excavation
of Bloomer Cut. We know that Bloomer Cut was cut beginning the week of February
27, 1864, as the Placer Herald mentions the work. The Placer Herald further
says,
on July 30, 1864 that the number of men employed at Bloomer "does not exceed
40," and the whole number of men at work between NewCastle and Auburn "does
not
exceed 60." As to the racial make up of these men, on April 16, 1864 the
Placer Herald states that an accident occured, and "two of the hands, a
Portugese
and
Frenchman" were "mutilated horribly" while Mr. (S)Trowbridge (sic)
[will] "probably
....(lose) his left eye."
No Chinese mentioned.
The Placer Herald was sensitive to the racial make up of the work force
– this is noted in the following dated March 18, 1865: "The Pacific
Railroad
Co.
are
working from six to seven hundred white and Chinese laborers, from NewCastle
to a distance of three miles above Auburn. ... The heaviest portion of the
work in the immediate vicinity of Auburn is done, and cuts, fills, and trestle
work near NewCastle are well advanced." I suggest that had Chinese workers
been actively employed in the construction of the Pacific Rail Road,
prior to
this
date, the paper would have mentioned same. Mr. Chew does not tell us, in his
self published book, what the Chinese were doing while employed by Mr. Strobridge,
which is a bit different from all the payroll sheets that I have been priviledged
to review: all payroll sheets had a workers title behind their names, along with
pay rates, etc., and each payroll sheet specifically stated at what portion of
the road the work was being done.
... Chapter 4 [states incorrectly] that the CPRR didn't lay rail after reaching
Junction (Roseville) in 1864. ... The rails reached NewCastle June
6, and service
started
that same day. ... As to [whether] we may finally learn "of workers in baskets," that
waterfront
has been covered by Edson Strobridge in his book Legends
of Cape Horn.
It is of historic interest to read "Report of the Chief Engineer upon Recent
Surveys, Progress of Construction and Estimated Revenue of the Central Pacific
Railroad of California," dated December, 1864, that the author of this report,
Sam S. Montague, Acting Chief Engineer C P R R of Cal. says of Cape Horn "The
construction of the Road around this point will involve much heavy work, though
the material
encountered is not of a very formidable character, being a soft friable slate,
which yields readily to the pick and bar." Note, please, no mention of
blasting powder in large quantities is mentioned. Following the fire in Burnt
Flat in
the Summer of 2004, I spent a day walking the 1/4 mile or so of burnt over land
immediately below the grade.
Walking upright, from East to West, I did not require a rope around my waist,
nor a basket to hold me vertical. Let me be clear: I walked the "precipitous
rocky bluff" immediately below the grade without the use of artificial
support. I
did find two empty kegs of black powder, manufacted by the Hercules
Powder Co. Only
two. Not 10, not 20, not 50, just two. Seems Mr. Montague was correct as to
the use of "pick and bar."
Finally, the concern as to the mortality
of workers
on the CPRR.
Mr. Chew finds in his research, published in his book, that some 130 deaths of
rail road workers are mentioned in news accounts of the day. These deaths occured
in accidents, fights, avalanche, disease, etc. Mr. Chew goes on to say that
many workers were killed during construction of Tunnel 6 due to the use of nitroglycerine. His
comments fly directly in the face of the article written
by John Robert Gillis (Mr. Gillis was the assistant engineer under L.
M.
Clement, in charge of construction between Cisco and Truckee) which was read
before the American Society of Civil
Engineers in New York on January 5, 1870, in which he said in part "...
At
Donner
Pass I only recall two accidents, and those would have happened with powder."
I agree that many workers died during the period of construction, but I fear
that these folks died quietly, and in the probable company of other employees.
I base this on the following: From the Elko lndependent, January 5,
1870 "Six
cars are strung along the road between here and Toano, and are being loaded with
dead Celestials for transportation to the Flowery Kingdom. We understand the
Chinese Companies pay the Railroad Company $10 for carrying to San Francisco
each dead Chinaman."
And then in Sacramento, June 30, 1870 the Reporter says: "Bones
in Transit—The accumulated bones of perhaps 1200 Chinamen came in by the
eastern
train yesterday
from along the line of the Central Pacific Railroad. The lot comprises about
20,000 pounds. Nearly all of them are the remains of employes of the company,
who were engaged in building the road."
I would suggest that small pox killed these
workers between 1868 and 1869, as
evidenced by the "pest cars" maintained by the CPRR. You may recall
that Mrs. Strobridge attended to these sick workers, and was stricken by small
pox, herself. Newspaper
articles are rife with articles in that period regarding the small pox epidemic.
Rather
than suggest that unsafe work practices were common on the Pacific Railroad,
it would be a noble effort for Mr. Chew to determine the correct number of workers
that died due to smallpox.
... —G J Chris Graves, NewCastle, AltaCal'a

Where
should I look for information about old stagecoach lines?
For information about stagecoach lines, here are some links
and books.
Also check the links on our map page, especially
the links at the bottom of the page where you can find searchable indexes
of available maps. (The map collections of the Library
of Congress [search for "stage," not "stagecoach"] and the University
of California, Berkeley's Bancroft
Library [search for title keywords "stage map"] both have many historic
maps of stage routes.)
Where
should I look for information about Central Pacific Railroad surveys?
See the two Reports sections of the
readings, and Railroad Maps Exhibit where
there are links to three sets of detailed survey maps from California and
Nevada. Theodore Judah's description
of the route is included in the 1863 first annual report of the CPRR.
Also see the note about the Judah CPRR survey route
map at the California State Archives. For 1850's survey information,
see the Explorations and Surveys for the Pacific Railroad (a 12
volume work in 13 books, including a volume of maps), and the Stansbury
book which has a rarely seen second volume of maps – both of these books
are available online from the University of Michigan – see the links on
the CPRR.org Online Books page.
(We haven't found the maps from these books on-line – please tell
us if you find that they are available on the Internet.) David
Bain's meticulously research book "Empire Express" is a great source,
or see the several chapters of John
Galloway's book reproduced on this website. Also see the question
about primary sources on the FAQ's
page.
> As to the identity of some of the surveyors
... such as "Ives," I refer you to my recent book, "Empire
Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad" (Viking, 1999,
Penguin, 2000, also available in most libraries). The end notes should
be of help ... I suggest you check out the survey maps held at the California
State Library – Judah's
and Montague and Clement's work
is there. They have an extraordinary collection. The California State Railroad
Museum is a good place to visit, by the way, while you're in Sacramento.
Bigger than in Carson City [Nevada], though Carson City's museum is excellent.
I believe there may be some maps in the Bancroft Library section donated
by Theodore Judah's widow, Anna, in the 19th century. And I've seen some
at the Interior Department holdings at the National
Archives in Washington, D.C., those submitted by the railroads to back
their progress claims. For that matter, there are many surveyors'
maps held at the Union Pacific Archives in Omaha, including some of the
original work done by the most advance engineers out there in Indian country.
Since the Union Pacific railroad and the Southern Pacific railroad are
now one corporate entity, I believe there have been efforts to centralize
their archival holdings, meaning the transfer of documents from California
to Omaha. —David Bain
> The first railroad survey across what is now Nevada was done by Edward
Beckwith as part of the Pacific
Railroad Survey in 1854. His published report is available as a government
document at University of Nevada, Reno. This was actually more of a preliminary
reconnaissance than a survey. To my knowledge Judah made no explorations
in Nevada, though I think he made it as far east as Virginia City.
As far as the other [surveyors] (Clement, Ives, Kidder, Montague), it might
me that only final reports exist. Most of these were probably published
as government reports of the Department of Interior. It is possible that
some preliminary reports are also in the National Archives. You might check
with the State Archives here in Carson. They may have something, though
I didn't find anything relative to their line in the Truckee River
canyon. —Wendell Huffman, Carson City LibraryThe
greatest problem in trying to establish what was a reasonably accurate
slope for the original rock face at Cape Horn is due to the 1929 widening
which moved the face back some 15-20 feet from the original cut made in
1865. The face of original cuts can be seen in the photos I provided in
my essay however
there is nothing scientific in making the determination I did. Actually
I had a Civil Engineer review a 1946 USGS 7 1/2 minute quadrangle
Topo
map which we blew up to expand the scale to a 1" = 250' scale with
40' contour intervals and then determined the slope from several different
locations across the cut. It never exceeded 50 degrees. These calculations
compare with the use of a protractor on the early photographs. I can assure
you I was very careful not to do the same as others by just making a casual
observation and making a guess at the slope. I fully realize that I can
be second guessed by others but I have yet to have anyone provide any information
that would change my calculations other than guessing. The newly
found statement by
Judah quoted
as describing the face of Cape Horn as "nearly perpendicular" and "1200'
feet high above the North Fork of the American River" is going to be
a difficult one to respond to only because Judah was an Engineer who made
the original observation and has been made out to be the Icon of the CPRR
location. He was wrong on the elevation of the grade above the river but
I doubt that he ever meant for anyone to accept his guess of 1200 foot
as a measured distance. It just was not important. So far as "nearly perpendicular"
it is my take that that statement too was no more than a casual observation
as he apparently did not measure it. But what Judah actually meant god
only knows. I am coming to the conclusion that the steepest part of Cape
Horn was probably more than 50 degrees, perhaps as much 70 degrees or so
but at the moment that is only a guess. Just looking at the old Southern
Pacific r/w map the steepest part could not have amounted to more than
a few hundred feet and then not in a continuous section. No evidence remains
at Cape Horn that would lead one to have much of an idea how steep the
face was originally was. ... —Ed Strobridge

Locomotives
– Schenectady built Juno, Jupiter, etc.
> The
Schenectady built Juno ... is one of four CP engines named for literally
fabulous
women, and the only engines on the CP
roster named for women. All of the group were Schenectady built, in June of
1869.
Eureka No. 158 was named for the state "coat of arms" and is represented
by
a allegorical goddess; Diana No. 159 is a literal goddess, typically
carrying a bow and quiver for the hunt; Sultana No. 160 was a popular is
generic Oriental queen in the 18th and 19th century, typically depicted
lounging in turbans and not much else, while Juno No. 161 is appropriately
the wife and consort of Jupiter.
The style of paintwork, lettering and finish on Juno is identical to
Jupiter, which helps suggest that a standard Schenectady style used on most
if not all, CP orders for eight wheel locomotives during the construction
era. Specifically between the construction of Jupiter in August 1868 and
Juno the following June. I believe she is the namesake for the month, as
well.
The tender tank of Yellow Fox No. 151, photographed outside of the CP shops
in about 1870, matches as well, indicating that the "Fox" series engines,
No's. 148-152, were also in this style. Despite the reference to the color
of the fox, it was not common to paint engines individually within an order
and I seriously doubt any of them were painted to harmonize with their name.

... Thanks for your note, and especially website. In ... the Savage
photo -
the engine on the turntable
is Juno.
Because I helped draw up the "new" color schemes for the Jupiter at the
Golden Spike National Historic Site, I have an ongoing interest in early locomotive
color schemes in
general and the Schenectady Locomotive Works, which built Jupiter,
specifically. Photos of other Schenectady built machines in factory paint
on the CP are rare, and the Savage photo especially valuable for comparisons
to the "as built" appearance of Jupiter. I can't tell you how good its been
to have seen this for my research work.
In a nutshell, I've found evidence that the Jupiter's blue and crimson paint
scheme was a standard factory design, and reflected the Scottish ancestry of
the locomotive builders. Walter McQueen and John Ellis were both born in
Scotland before emigrating to America and operating the Schenectady
Locomotive Works. Blue is the national color of Scotland, and in the 1860's
Scotland's Caledonian Railway operated engines in blue and crimson. Both
colors are very dark and has helped revise the color scheme I did for the
replica engines. I'm working with the National Park Service people to
provide them with new information to guide future repaintings.
The photo of Juno has been immeasurably helpful to establish that the paint
scheme on the Jupiter was also used on other Schenectady built engines on
the same road - and that Jupiter was not unique, but rather standard; in
other words, the Savage photo helps provide a context for the Jupiter. ...

Here
is a builders list of Mason ten wheelers from 1859 (the first) to 1866 (the
last of the pattern), from Sylvan Wood's notes.
All were 17 x 24 cylinders, 48" drivers. Twenty were built - sixteen were for
the Lehigh Valley, and four for the Central Pacific. No other railroad purchased
ten wheel locomotives from Mason at this time.
After 1866 Mason does not build another ten wheeler until 1869, and then again
for the Lehigh Valley. Presumably this engine is of the more conventional pattern.
There may be among LVRR people some side drawings. As all the engines had identical
measurements, this would be helpful for Conness.

>The Central Pacific rebuilt two Danforth-Cooke 4-2-4Ts (sisters to the C. P.
Huntington) into 4-2-2 tender engines with the original rear loco truck at
the rear of the tender, and a single axle in frame-mounted pedestals at the
from of the tender.
... the Central Pacific in the 1870s stretched a number of
tenders to increase water (and fuel?) space. They used a 6-wheel truck at the
rear, and kept a 4-wheel truck at the front. Another group of stretched
tenders used two 6-wheel trucks. I believe these stretched tenders were
particularly used for passenger engines across the Nevada desert. Drawings
of the version with 2 6-wheel trucks appeared in the Railroad Gazette about
1884, and
also in the 1886 edition of Recent Locomotives (reprinted by Newton Gregg in
the 1970s).
Central Pacific 4-4-0 #149 (Schenectady, 1868) had such a stretched tender
(with 2 6-wheel trucks) when it pulled the Jarrett & Palmer special on the
record-setting cross country run in 1876. A photo of the engine taken at
Wadsworth before the run, and before the tender was repainted, clearly shows
in the paint where the section was added to the tender tank. Unlike other
railroads on the Jarrett & Palmer run which switched power at division points
in the traditional way, CP #149 pulled the train all the way from Ogden, Utah,
to
Oakland, California. A double engine crew, plus a roadmaster handled the
engine the entire distance.—Kyle Williams Wyatt,
Curator of History & Technology,
California State Railroad Museum[from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

> Kyle described these tenders as "stretched." Actually the
4 truck / 6 truck
tenders were built that way by Cooke and Schenectady in the 1870's for
4-6-0's. The tenders that sported two 6-wheel trucks were built by the
Central Pacific in 1874 and applied to engines running across Nevada. For
photographs of these cars see p. 136 in my SP tender history chapter in vol.
l of [Guy
L. Dunscomb,
Donald K. Dunscomb and Robert A.
Pecotich,
Southern Pacific Steam Pictorial, California Edition: Volume 1, 1000
Series - 2800 Series] published in 1991
and now out of print. I discovered after this book was published that the 6-wheel
truck tenders were built in 1874 by Central
Pacific. I had only noted in vol. 1 that they probably were built about 1876
and probably by CP. This was noted in my concluding tender history chapter
in vol. 2, page 166 (1999). Such information can be easily missed by
readers.—Arnold Menke[from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

> On the tenders with two 6-wheel trucks the CP likely built a new underframe,
but if the tender behind the CP 4-4-0 #149 is any example, they clearly
stretched the tank.
On the 4-6 truck tenders, it seems to me I've seen some behind CP 4-4-0s
built in the late 1860s, suggesting even back then they were swapping tenders
around.

... what was perhaps the first Norris single (in not-yet perfected form),
the Wm Penn built for the Philadelphia & Columbia in 1835 (and apparently
later upgraded to standard Norris design in the late 1830s-early 1840s) ended
up
(after another rebuilt in 1865) in California where it survived until after 1900,
still with V-hook valve gear. It operated on the Central Pacific in the
1860s-80s before being sold to an industrial operation in the mid 1880s. ...

On the topic of names for locomotive types, it is fairly common for charts
of the Whyte system to show the 4-10-0 as a "Mastodon". Did
any one really call 4-10-0s Mastodons? How many were there? I only know of
the Central Pacific "El Gobonador", and I've never seen it
called a "Mastodon". I've wondered whether the Mastodon name really
belonged to the 4-8-0, but on the CP/SP, those were called 12- wheelers. ...
In the 19th century, SP (and CP) referred to the 4-8-0s (and the Stevens 2-8-0s)
as Mastodons.

In the early 20th century SP revised their names for wheel
arrangements, including the following, some of which varied from common names:

Checking the 1901 SP Revised classification and Assignment of Locomotives,
I find the following: ... The heavy 4-8-0s built in
1899-1900 were classed as Consolidation Mastodon locomotives. A 1902 revision
adds some pre-Harriman Standard heavy 2-8-0s to
this class. All in this class are compounds. The medium weight 4-8-0s (built
1895-96) were classed as 12-Wheel Mastodon locomotives. There are both compounds
and simple locomotives in this class. The lighter, earlier 4-8-0s (built 1882-1893)
were classed as 12-Wheel locomotives.
There are both compounds and simple locomotives in this class. ... All the
4-8-0s were later placed in the 12-Wheel class, while the Consolidation
Mastodon heavy 2-8-0s later simply became Consolidations.

CPRR Turntables.
> I'm interested in locating any information (or ideally drawings) of the
standard Central Pacific "A" Frame turntable of the 1860s, typically about
50 to 51 feet long. In addition to my own interests, I'm trying to help
Golden Spike National Historic Site (Promontory) document the style turntable
that
the
Central
Pacific installed at Promontory shortly after the ceremony.
... The Central Pacific (and Southern Pacific)
standard "A" frame turntable design evolved over the years. The style that
survives at Laws on the SP narrow gauge, and that has been replicated at
the Nevada State Railroad Museum, Orange Empire Railway Museum, and the
City of Folsom, was adopted in the late 1880s and was still current as late
as the early 1900s (a drawing dated 1906 survives in the CSRM collection).
What we are trying to do is take the technology backwards to the earlier CP
style.
Any help would be appreciated.
—Kyle Williams Wyatt,
Curator of History & Technology,
California State Railroad Museum

> The Hart [#139] photo of the Newcastle
turntable is
also shown in Gerry Best's "Iron
Horses to Promontory" on page 22. Best describes the turntable as "Strobridge's
portable turntable at the end of track near Auburn." which obviously is
at Newcastle. The engine is the Conness as identified by Hart however since it
was not built
until Feb.1864 and did not arrive in Sacramento until late December 1864 after
a 190 day voyage around the Horn. The photo more than likely dates to March 26,
1865, ten days after it was first put in service when the Conness hauled six
cars and a load of excursionists to Newcastle and back. The turntable is probably
one of the earliest used on the CP but whether a "portable" turntable
is of the same dimension or configuration as a permanent turntable installed
[after
the ceremony]
at
Promontory
is another question to be answered.
—Ed Strobridge

> Studying the clear view of the Newcastle Hart turntable view and the
Savage Rocklin view on the CPRR website, I note some interesting differences.
The Newcastle turntable is clearly smaller. The
Conness just barely fits. The table only has two set of trussrods. The Rocklin
table is longer and has three sets of trussrods. It also has a doubled timber
under the "A" frame. ... [Re-engineer backwards from photos] ... and also from
drawings of later turntables, SP and otherwise (Carter Bros.) ... Many thanks. —Kyle
Williams
Wyatt, Curator of History & Technology,
California State Railroad Museum

> After looking more closely at the Colfax turntable which appears to be
a permanent one, and heavier than the portable one at Newcastle, with three
truss
rods on either side and heavier timbering, the engine parked on it is the Juno.
The Juno #161 wasn't built until June 1869 so the photo at Colfax could not
have been taken until late 1869 or early 1870 which means that the "A" Frame
turntable was likely a standard design at that time. If the turntable was
installed at Promontory in "late 1869" then it appears that the
Colfax design may have been the same as installed at Promontory.
We're getting closer!
Just another observation. If you look closely at Hart's "Newcastle" photo # 139
and look at the trestle, it sure doesn't look like any photos of the Newcastle
trestle I have ever seen. It is built on a short curve and I do not think the
Newcastle trestle had any curves. Look at how short the trestle is as compared
with Hart's other Newcastle trestle photo (#145). It is obvious in photo #139
that the fill is nearly up to the trestle, the trestle itself is a short one
and the bents half the height of those in photo #145. Another interesting observation
is that it appears the engine sitting on the turntable can't go anywhere. Nowhere
in the photo is it obvious that there is a track that connects with the turntable.
It has to be there or the engine wouldn't have been on the turntable. Makes
me wonder, especially after Gerald Best describes the photo "as the end of track
near Auburn" if there wasn't a short trestle between Newcastle and Auburn. —Ed
Strobridge

> There is a short stub rack at the back side of the turntable extending
out over the fill leading to the trestle abutment. The turntable lead has
to be extending to the left in the photo.
—Charlie Siebenthal

> Regarding the Hart photo of the turntable at NewCastle – I have
a number of photos of
the trestle at NewCastle, all taken prior to 1907, all
show a bend
in the
trestle. That 'slot' in the hill in the background is NewCastle Cut, it is
there yet today. And, finally, aside from I-80 that runs through the ravine
over which the trestle was built, all the background hills in the photo are
absolutely
identical to what can be seen there today. I live less than a mile from the
site in the photo, I can attest to the accuracy of the label "NewCastle".
... I have located a map, #59-3TC17, made by the Central Pacific Railway Company
January 6, 1958 in preparation for construction of I-80. Since I-80 went
under both the 1864 and 1909 grades, they are both shown on this wonder.
The 'shoofly' that was made to accommodate the building of an underpass for
I-80 used the 1864 grade, as shown on this map. It has a nice
curve...........for those of you with CPRR/SPRR maps, you would want to see
the map entitled S.P.R.R. shoofly alignment and profiles, sheet #67., just
West of SPRR Tunnel #18. —G J Chris Graves, NewCastle, Cal.

> Having walked thru that cut many times, agreed. And the spur in the right
foreground remains a constant for some years/decades thereafter (until the
Harriman era realignment and Newcastle Tunnel construction).
I also note something in this shot of "Conness." I had never thought much
about
before...the tail track on the "east" side is not a set-out as much as it is
an emergency stop support to allow the engine(s) to overshoot the turntable
while
attempting to get centered above the pivot pin. Since engineers by necessity
were controlling their machines exclusively by throttle and Johnson-bar in
order to stop (with maybe a wee bit of help from the fireboy working the tender
brake wheel) without the (trestled) tail-track, a locomotive could overshoot
and pile up in the ravine below all too easily. Ow! See why getting air brakes
was such a good thing?
The shot of the "Juno." on the turntable at Rocklin is a peach – one I'd
somehow missed seeing before. Is this turntable as strongly similar to the
replicas built at Carson City, Folsom and
so on as close in form/style as I
think it is?
—Kevin Bunker

> Thanks to all for the ideas and suggestions. At this point we have drafted
a sketch of a representative turntable, which may have been used at
Promontory, Utah. The photographs and details you all have provided has
been great. What we do know is that the turntable arrived at Promontory
May 10, 1869 and was put together the next few days (based on newspaper
accounts). The top of the turntable is visible in the A. J. Russell
photograph published in Best's "Iron Horses to Promontory," p. 62,
especially in the photo's detail blow-up. This was most likely a portable
"A" frame turntable used to turn locomotives when the CP terminus was
at Promontory (moved to Ogden November-March, 1870). Sometime in the 1870s
the turntable was relocated to nearly opposite the "last spike" marker.
A three stall roundhouse was also built at that time. Both have been
detailed in archeological excavations.
The hope is that evidence of the 1869 turntable exists, possibly remnants
of a stone ring foundation at the center pivot or at the ends. What else
might be at the sight of the short-lived structure? ... [Known] photos of Promontory
... two
Silvis and one A. C. Hull we have a pretty good idea of the streetscape (when
matched
with Russell images and the Frank Leslie's
illustrations) —Bob Spude,
National
Park Service

> Please double-check for the turntable used at Terrace. Are the "pit"
or pivot ring dimensions of either the TT at promontory or Terrace shown in
the
CPRR
1888 [sic] resurveying maps?
—Kevin Bunker

> There may not be anything left. It depends upon whether they used a wood
or stone foundation for the center bearing. There is nothing but a shallow
depression at Spooner summit from the old Glenbrook-to-Spooner railroad's turntable.
It is quite likely that the Spooner table used a wood foundation--it was a
lumber railroad. With the second turntable location at Promontory being associated
with an engine house, I'd expect them to have used stone–and that may still
be there. As you seem to know, there was also generally some kind of support
at the ends of the table when lined up with the various tracks--to prevent
the table from tipping as a loco rolled on or off the table.
—Wendell Huffman

> Wow. Thanks for the great amount of info. Wendell, you're probably
right about minimal evidence on site. In 1869, with several trains per day
being
transferred between the UP and CP and the CP needing to turn at least four
locomotives per day, probably more, then just maybe they used stone
foundations for a more substantial base to the 1869 turntable (like the
granite in the image of the Folsom reconstruction accompanying your
report). Of course, the CP could have been moved those stones to the
relocated turntable. Since the turntable site and the station site are
probably the only positive 1869 features left at Promontory (the grade and
"last rail" were removed and upgraded several times) these are important to
define and, hopefully, find.
For a broad, see: general
overview of some of the activity at the park. —Bob Spude, National
Park Service

> The Central Pacific built a completely round and fully enclosed roundhouse
at Truckee, California, in the 1880s. By the 1930s it had lost its roof, and
was completely torn down by the late 1940s or 1950s. —Kyle
Williams Wyatt, Historian/Curator, California State Railroad Museum[from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]

"Giving money and power to government
is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." —P.J.
O'Rourke

Whistle
signals.
... the Massachusetts law requiring bells and whistles on
locomotives dates to
an Act of the Great and General Court ... enacted in
1835. —Charlie
Smith*

... An early Central Pacific sheet of "Instructions to employees" (undated,
but while Charles Crocker was still superintendent – so ca.1864) gives
but four whistles: "one short sound of the whistle as a signal to apply
brakes; two short sounds of the whistle as a signal to loose them; three a
signal to back; several short sounds of the whistle is an alarm signal and
brakemen will use every effort to stop the train." And elsewhere states
the engineman must sound the whistle when within one-half mile of a station." All
that is said regarding grade crossings is that "the bell must be run eighty
rods before crossing a highway and until it is passed." An 1865 book of "Rules
and regulations to be observed by officers and men in the employ of rail road
companies in California" by A.N. Rood (superintendent of the California
Central Railroad) is likewise remarkably sketchy when it comes to whistles:
one whistle for brakes; two to take them off; a repetition of short sharp whistles
is danger; three to back; four to open a switch; one long whistle to call passengers
fifteen minutes before starting a train; and ring the bell five minutes before
departing. Elsewhere in the book enginemen are instructed to give a whistle
signal six hundred yards before arriving at a station; in foggy weather to
sound the whistle at least every mile; and to give three long sharp whistles
for withdrawing signalmen. It says nothing about grade crossings at all! —Wendell
Huffman*

Abridged Notes on the Genesis of the Locomotive Whistle/Horn and Bell
as Audible Signaling Devices (2001)
by Frederick C. Gamst
Locomotives have long had two kinds of audible signaling devices, the steam
whistle, later replaced by the air horn, and the bell. Locomotive
whistle/horn and bell regulations are usually considered as a unit. What is the
technological developmental history of these two kinds of audible devices? Railroading
on cross-country rights-of-way, that is, outside
of mines, began in England about 1600. Pioneering British railway technology
and operating practice diffused to the rest of the world, including the culturally
contiguous daughter countries of the US and Canada.

3. Locomotives without whistles: In the late 1830s, as railroad traffic
began to explode and became mechanized by the locomotive, guards were hired
from the coaching industry, then being destroyed by rail competition, to
supervise the engine drivers and insure rules compliance. In America, copying British practice, the two employees were usually called, respectively, conductors and locomotive engineers. But sometimes the two British terms were used. At first, on steam trains, the engine driver/engineer or the guard/conductor used a mouth-blown horn as a warning and signaling device. But the speed of a steam train, running at up to 35 mph, made the ever-closing range of effectiveness of sound quite limited. The earliest experimental locomotive steam engines had no whistle..

4. The advent of the locomotive whistle: During 1832, Stephenson erected
two engines for the Leicester & Swannington (L&S), the Samson and the
Goliath. They entered service in 1833. The Samson immediately ran into a horse and wagonload of eggs crossing the line of track at Thornton. The engine driver had mouth-blown his horn, but it was either not heard or not heeded. Accordingly, in May 1833, the L&S mounted the first whistle on a locomotive. The appliance was, then, called a steam trumpet, after the mouth-blown device it replaced. A local maker of musical instruments produced the whistle. Stephenson mounted it top of the boiler's steam dome, which furnishes dry steam to the cylinders. The device was 1 ft. 6 in. high and had an ever-widening trumpet shape with a 6-in. diameter at its top or mouth. The L&S soon mounted the successful appliance on its other locomotives (see C. E. Stretton, The Development of the Locomotive , 5th ed., London,1896, pp. 50-52).
The whistle innovation spread rapidly to railroads on both sides of the
Atlantic. The Baldwin works of Philadelphia produced the locomotive Old
Ironsides in 1832, on the English model. Woodcuts of the engine show a whistle
mounted on the steam dome, but this might be a later addition.

5. Development of the whistle: Over the years, the audible quality of the
locomotive whistle improved from the early harsh roar to various kinds of
chime sounds. Locomotive engineers/drivers learned to trill their whistles in
idiosyncratically distinctive styles, no matter what the code they sounded.
The evolved steam whistle has one or more cylinders of thin metal, closed at one end with an orifice near the other end. Via a manual pull on a whistle cord
attached to a whistle valve, steam enters the cylinder and exhausts with its
characteristic whistling sound. Escaping steam causes the cylinder to vibrate
thus creating its musical tone. The pitch depends on the diameter of the cylinder and position of the orifice. Chime whistles have several compartments of different lengths in the cylinder: the shorter ones giving higher tones..

6. The locomotive bell: The bell was first used in the US after a train of
the Boston & Worcester (B&W) hit a carriage and horse at a grade crossing,
during the first such US accident, in 1834. Consequently, in 1835, the
Massachusetts legislature enacted a pioneering law that all locomotives
would have a bell of "at least 35 lbs." rung "at least 80 rods from the place of crossing." The B&W management anticipated the law and, prior to it, mounted a prescribed bell to be manually tolled by the fireman. At this time, the B&W also erected the first US grade crossing signs, in white with black lettering: "LOOK OUT FOR THE ENGINE AND CARS" (F. C. Gamst, 1983, "The Development of Operating Rules." Proceedings of the Railway Fuel and Operating Officers Association, 1982 46:166). By the end of the 1800s, an automatic bell ringer, powered by steam or compressed air, began to replace ringing of the bell by hand from the locomotive cab via a rope.

7. The air horn: With the advent of locomotives other than steam, an air
horn or air whistle replaced the steam whistle..

8. Signaling by whistle code: The tolling engine bell simply warns of a
pending or an actual movement of rolling equipment. The whistle/horn could
be used as a simple audible warning. (In modern railroad operating rules the
word whistle is used to include air horns, hence, whistle signals.) .For example, a Form C Track Bulletin could direct: "SOUND WHISTLE FREQUENTLY APPROACHING AND PASSSING MEN AND MACHINES" at specified times and locations.
Most locomotive whistle signals are coded, however. The Standard Code of
Operating Rules of the Association of American railroads (1993) lists coded
whistle rules 14a through 14w. For example, signal 14l is the ubiquitous
grade crossing signal - - o - (two long blasts, a short, and a long). Two shorts (o o), 14g, answers any signal not otherwise provided for, and four shorts (o o o o), 14j, calls for signals to be given. .

9. Audibility and use of of bell and whistle: Although tolling of the
engine bell is required by various operating rules, when a heavy train roars
past at full throttle, the approaching bell's toll seldom can be heard..

10. Notes on the development of whistle codes: The earliest (1830s
through the 1840s) broadside sheets and books of operating rules make no mention
of codes for locomotive whistle signals. For example, the Regulations for the
Transportation Department of the Western Rail Road, (Springfield, Mass., 1842)
contain no mention of even having to sound a whistle. The WRR was the first
truly cross-country carrier in the US, and was built and superintended by Major
George Washington Whistler. (Now the reader knows who Whistler's [the artist]
father was.) The Boston and Maine Railroad. Rules for Running Trains &c. (no.
30, 1850) had no mention of sounding of a whistle. By 1857, the first truly
long-distance railroad and the one introducing telegraphic train orders to
supplement timetable schedules, the New York and Erie, had five coded whistle
rules, all for operating a train. No code was for grade crossings or for warning
persons and livestock (Instructions for the Running of Trains, Etc. on the
New York and Erie Railroad, New York, 1857). The same whistle codes and their
meanings were also found in some other books of rules of that time. Thus, some
agreement must have been made regarding the standardization of the whistle
code across a number of carriers. The Rutland and Burlington Railroad. Instructions
for the Running of Trains, Etc. (Rutland, Vt. 1854) in Rule 49 directed that
the bell must be rung by the fireman "80 rods before crossing a road." Also, "The
Whistle must be sounded at all obscure [road] crossings." Thus, we see mandatory
bell ringing but not required whistling at all grade crossings. The whistle
was not used as much as in later years. Indeed, Rule 87 instructed that: "too
much sounding of the whistle impairs its use as a signal of danger," and the
brakemen were to tie down hand brakes when the engineer shut off steam, without
his having to whistle down brakes. The Rules and Regulations . . . of the Philadelphia,
Wilmington and
Baltimore . . . (Philadelphia, 1854) has in its Rule XLI the entire whistle code
used by the "Engine Driver": o, release hand brakes; o o stop the train; o
o o , back the train; o o o o call for signals from a switchman; o o o o o
, "wood up." The first four codes remain in the standard code to this day,
and must derive from early agreement on practice. Incidentally, Rule XXXVIII
of the PW&B allowed either the engine bell to be rung or the whistle sounded
at least 80 rods from a crossing, "unless there be a municipal regulation to
the contrary." Here we see sounding the whistle for crossings on this line
(later to be that of the Pennsylvania and now Amtrak's NEC) was optional. Also,
we find early whistle restrictions, perhaps even bans, in some locations. The
earliest uniform code of operating rules was done by the Board of
Rail-Road Commissioners of New York State. The Codification of the Rules
and Regulations for Running Trains on the Rail-Roads of New-York (Albany, 1856)
contained three "Signals" rules, 29-31, for what are today standard codes for
applying and releasing brakes and backing. Under Rule 239 for "Enginemen," he
must cause the bell or whistle to be used "when directed." Rule 240, in its
entirety, adds: "And at least 80 rods before arriving at any road-crossing;
and to be continued until he passes it." Massachusetts passed a similar codification,
by the Railroad Commissioners of Massachusetts and the Committee of Railroad
Officers, as Rules and Regulations for Operating Railroads (Boston, 1872). All
the rules were continuously numbered. Under "General Signals," Rule 1 contained
three subrules, for what are today standard codes for applying and releasing
brakes, and backing, plus one for recalling a flagman (o o o o). Rule 2 instructed: "The
whistle must always be sounded or the bell rung eighty rods before reaching a
public highway crossing." Rule 3 added: The Bell must be kept ringing until
the highway is passed; and whenever a person on the track is thought to be in
danger the whistle must be sounded." Because of the great amount of railroad
lines and traffic of the two northeastern states and their early actions for
rail safety, the two codificati ons had to influential across the country. No
specific codes for whistling for grade crossings is given, however. Because no
specific whistle code is given for the R&B, PW&B, New York State and Massachusetts
rules, or on many other railroads, the engineer could have whistled any crossing
warning. But what actually was the whistle signal used to warn at grade crossings
and for persons and animals on and near the track? A succession of (short) blasts
on the whistle (o o o o o o o o) would have been a natural reaction. Indeed,
undoubtedly reflecting rule-of-thumb practice, the first Standard Code, drafted
in 1886, by the General Time Convention had Rule 52: "A succession of short
blasts on the whistle is an alarm for persons or cattle on the track. . . ." Additionally,
Rule 51 said: "Two long followed
by two short blasts of the whistle is the signal for approaching road
crossings at grade (thus, - - o o)" (Proceedings of the General Time
Convention and Its Successor the American Railway Association, from . . . 1886
to . . . 1893 Inclusive, New York, 1893). Here we have a differentiation between
warnings for grade crossings, perhaps unoccupied, and warnings to persons or
animals, actually on the track. (The railroads' GTC created the standard time
zones and the ARA; the ARA is the predecessor of today's AAR.) By the time of
H. W. Forman's 477-page, classic The Rights of Trains on
Single Track (N.Y., 1904), based on the Standard Code amended as of 1902,
the whistle signals were all grouped under Rule 14, with 14l being the grade
crossing code (- - o o ) "approaching public crossings at grade." The
numbered rules no longer formally mentioned an alarm for persons or animals on
the track, but an unnumbered paragraph after the whistle code gave the words
of original Code Rule 52. Where did the old Standard Code - - o o originate?
The book of rules of the Pennsylvania Railroad served as the basis for drafting
the original Standard Code. The Rules and Regulations for the Government of Transportation
of the Pennsylvania Rail Road (Altoona, 1864) were the most comprehensive then
produced in North America, undoubtedly from the material pressures of burgeoning
Civil War traffic. Pages 10-11 had a discrete code of "Engineers' Signals by
Whistle," numbered from 1 through 7. No specific grade-crossing code existed.
Rule 1 read: "The whistle shall be sounded as an Alarm Signal when
approaching a Station or Road Crossing." And Rule 2 read: "A succession of
short blasts of the Whistle is an alarm for Cattle. . . ." The PRR rules of
1875 had a Rule 45 duplicating the above Rule 2. Rule 1 was replaced by a Rule
43: "Two long followed by two short blasts of the whistle is a signal for approaching
a road crossing at grade. (Thus - - o o)" (W. B. Sipes, The Pennsylvania Railroad,
1875, p. 257). The still more-developed Rules for the Government of Transportation
of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (Philadelphia, 1882) had a Rule 44 : "Two
long followed by two short blasts of the whistle is a signal for approaching
Road Crossings at grade. (Thus - - o o)." Rule 46, a succession of short blasts,
was the alarm for persons or cattle on the track. In the Rules of the Pennsylvania
Lines West of Pittsburgh. . . . (Pittsburgh, 1901), the two signal codes remained
the same, but they was now labeled as "Audible Signals" and included numbered
Rule "14l - - o o Approaching public crossings at grade." The numbered rules
no longer formally mentioned an alarm for persons or animals on the track, but
an unnumbered paragraph after the whistle code gave the now customary words about
successive blasts . Both Rule 14l and the unnumbered
paragraph were part of the Standard Code, not unfamiliar on the Pennsy. In sum,
the coded - - o o originated in the PRR rules, whatever its very first use might
have been. The revised Code of 1938 contained the present grade crossing whistle
code, 14l: - - o -. The final long blast must "be prolonged until the crossing
is reached.". The earliest adoption of the present rule, - - o - , predates
the 1938 Code, however. For some examples, the rules of the Southern Pacific
(1930) has Rule 14I coded as currently, - - o -, as do the rules of the Chesapeake & Ohio
(1931), the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western (1935), and the New York Central (1937).
As locomotive engineers told me when I first "hired out" on a railroad, in 1955,
the newer - - o - has a practical advantage over the former - - o o in that the
former could have the last long blast prolonged until the crossing had been entirely
passed. This was impossible with the latter signal.—Frederick C. Gamst* [Reproduced by permission of the author.]

... Fred Gamst's information indicated that SP adopted the - -
o - whistle code for grade crossings in 1930, ...
a fellow ... happens to own two January
1, 1923 rule books. One of the books had been updated with a printed
page of new rules pased over the old ones. The uncorrected 1923 book
shows Rule 14l as - - o o. Exactly what we'd expect, now that we've
been educated a bit.
But, what is really interesting is that the correction sheet – dated
April 1, 1928 – shows Rule 14l ad - o o - !
(This particular fellow's next rule book is not until 1943, which
shows the expected - - o - . So we've not actually seen the 1930
rule book that first shows the "modern" - - o -.)
But what strikes me as interesting is that the SP apparently did not
go directly from - - o o to - - o -, but in 1928 tried out a - o o -
code. Clearly this had the desired effect of putting out that
expandable long note at the end, but for some reason it lasted but a
short time.
... it seems to me all of this transition rather suggests
that any Morse code significance of the whistle codes was an
accident. It may well be that some locomotive engineers used the
Morse code meanings of the whistle codes as memnonic devices to
teach or remember the codes, but the whistle codes seem to have been
modified (at least) for practical purposes – the need to make that
last note last until reaching the crossing. Perhaps the change in
the late 20s-early 30s had more to do with increasing train speed
(and the difficulty in judging just when to start the whistle) than
any thing else. —Wendell Huffman** [from the R&LHS Newsgroup]

Great website. In looking at some of the pictures, I think a couple are
from the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad (NCNGRR). This short line ran
from Nevada City to Colfax from about 1867 to 1942. The pictures you show
of the trestle over the Bear River are now under Rollins lake. Rollins lake
was built in the early 1960's. J.J. Reilly stereoviews #201 and #207 are examples. Great Site!!! —Keith
PattisonWhen the railroads introduced standard time, how did they divide up
the country? i.e., did they draw boundaries to define zones, or was
the division specified in terms of what time was used on each railroad route?
Tom De-Fazio answers that they drew boundaries, explaining that " ... The
USA time
zone
system,
while
agreed upon by its constituencies, and since 1918 enforced as a
standard, has accommodations to allow change. So, the boundaries today
are different from what they were back in 1883 when the system was
initiated, and even different from what they were in 1918 when they
became officially sanctioned. e.g:
[About
Geography Time Zones] says that: " ... The time zones of the United
States are standardized by Congress and although the lines were drawn to avoid
populated
areas,
sometimes they've been moved to avoid complication ... "
Below are more references:
[Infoplease
World Time Zones] says:
" ... Until 1883 most railway companies relied on some 100 different, but
consistent, time zones. That year, the United States was divided into
four time zones roughly centered on the 75th, 90th, 105th, and 120th
meridians. At noon, on November 18, 1883, telegraph lines transmitted
GMT time to major cities where authorities adjusted their clocks to
their zone's proper time ... " [the
U.S. Naval Observatory website] says:
" ... For very readable accounts of the history of standard time in the
U.S., see:
Michael
O'Malley: Keeping Watch, A History of American Time (Viking,
1990).
William H. Earle: "November 18, 1883: The Day That Noon Showed Up on
Time," Smithsonian magazine, November 1983, pp. 193-208.
Ian R. Bartky and Elizabeth Harrison: "Standard and Daylight-saving
Time," Scientific American, May 1979 (Vol. 240, No. 5), pp. 46-53.
Carlene E. Stephens: Inventing Standard Time (National Museum of
American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1983) ... "
If you have any interest in the issues involved in the synchronization
of clocks over distances and applications to railroading and mapmaking
(geodesy), I recommend reading a new Book: Peter
Galison's Einstein's
Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires of Time (Norton, 2004).
Lastly, it's my impression that Ian
R. Bartky [Selling the True Time] made
something
of an
industry of addressing the history of time and time zone standards in
the USA." [Also see, Ian Bartky. "The Invention of
Standard Time" in Railroad History No.148.]
Adrian Ettlinger summarizes that " ... the railroads did define
time
zones geographically, initially along lines of longitude, but their observance
in
practice was only to serve as general guidelines. The de facto boundaries
were evidently set by the RR companies themselves, and varied. For instance
it appears that in Pennsylvania west of Pittsburgh, if one was on a PRR
route, one was in the Central time zone, but if on a B&O route, in the
Eastern time zone. At least it appears that way from the way train times
were shown in timetables.
... [but] time zones have been gradually shifting to the
west almost continually since they were introduced."
Thornton Waite
notes regarding time zones pre-1918
that "the copy of the January, 1910 Railway Guide shows how the
railroads ran their lines for the various time zones. The break point differed
according
to the railroad. The map in the guide shows this ... " according to Adrian
Ettlinger "showing
times observed on all major RR lines. ... The 1910 Official Guide also
has a
couple
of
pages
entitled 'Dividing Points –
Standard Time Sections,' which lists many cities, and what railroads observe
what time in each, and also, for most, what time is observed locally. ...
The map shows times associated with the meridians of 75 degrees for
Eastern time, and then each 15 degrees up to Pacific Time. But these are
not boundaries, but center axes around which those times seem to be
'recommended.' Evidently the nature of the system was that these were the
four standard times to be used (actually five, because the
'Atlantic/Intercolonial' zone was also in the system), and it was left to
the railroads to decide which time to adopt for which of their routes. One
consequence was that the Central zone, on the average, extended usually more
than half way to the Eastern's meridian, and generally almost all the way
west to the Mountain Zone's meridian. ... " [from
the R&LHS Newsgroup]Seeking a photograph of CPRR Surveyor, Butler Ives
I am working
on a manuscript concerning, in part, [Butler Ives'] work as
a surveyor in Oregon
prior to his work with the CPRR. ... He was born January 31, 1830 in Sheffield
Mass to Butler and Olive Morse Ives – the youngest of their ten children.
Orphaned upon his parents' deaths in 1846, he moved west to Detroit to
join several of his older brothers. He served on his older brother William
Ives' survey crew and was made a U.S. Deputy Surveyor by the Michigan
Surveyor General in 1850. In 1851 he and his brother William came west to
Oregon to assist with the public land survey. He remained in Oregon until
late 1854 when he returned to Michigan and again took up the work of
surveying there.
In 1861 he came west again to assist with the Nevada-California
state
boundary surveys and other work in the Carson City area. Then in
1866/1867 he went to work for the CPRR surveying out the line. He was
still in the CPRR's employ (headquartered in Sacramento) when he went out
in late December (1871) on a CPRR train to inspect the line north of
Vallejo after heavy rains. He fell from one of the cars, apparently
hitting his head, and drowned in a boggy area.
He was not married, and his constant "on the move" life of the surveyor
means that he didn't stay put long in any community. ...
I am hoping that there might be some photographs of surveyors at work in
the field ... that might include him in a
group, although it appears that there aren't a lot of photographs of the
surveyors ... —Kay
Atwood
Surely
what's depicted in Houseworth
stereo #1351 is a locomotive-fuel (cordwood) supply train, with the
laborers aboard ready to toss-off the loads and stack same at trackside.
I wonder how many times per week such trains ran, considering the voracious
wood appetite of the typical woodburning locomotive of that era.
Add to that information that Bloomer Cut was on the ascending grade (before
the line was double-tracked in 1901), the conclusion to be drawn is that
cordwood fuel tiers were plentiful and frequently placed -- perhaps every
20 - 25 miles (commensurate with water stations locations?). —Kevin
V. Bunker, Student Assistant, California State ArchivesWhat were the names of the two trains that met face to face for the first
time at Promontory Summit Utah?
Don't know of any names having been given to the trains, but the
CPRR engine
was the Jupiter and the UPRR Engine was #119. There is an eyewitness
account
of the CPRR train trip from Sacramento to Promontory Summit by Dr. Stillman,
and David Bain's Book Empire
Express includes a description of the trip on the
UPRR
train.
Another FAQ also relates
to
the first trains.
... I want to share an idea I have ...
hoping that someone will take up the idea and many of you will support it.
I am currently reading the book Nothing Like It In The World
by Stephen E. Ambrose on the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.
My husband has finished it and is halfway through Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad
by David Haward Bain. I failed to take advantage of many opportunities
I have had over my life to learn more about the railroad, having lived 9
years in Omaha, currently living in Reno with easy access to Sacramento,
and being married to a man whose father worked for the Southern Pacific,
Western Pacific, and Amtrak for a total of 46 years, but is no longer living.
As teachers, my husband Michael and I know the value of learning by experiencing
things first hand. In fact, we teach at a school in Wadsworth, Nevada
at the Big Bend of the Truckee River. While we could not go back and
be a part of the experience of those first trains and talk with the men who
helped build the railroad – my idea starts here.
Would it be possible for a trip to be organized that would
provide the opportunity for people to ride a special train from Omaha to
Sacramento or the other way around? This could be an educational trip
in addition to just being a lot of fun. There could be people on the
train who talk about the many aspects of the construction as we travel the
route. Being a Chautauqua fan, why not have people “be” some of the
famous men associated with the construction of the railroad, sharing the
history, their thoughts, feelings, and experiences in the first person, allowing
the passengers to interact with the character? This would be a great
way for the passengers to learn more and gain a lot of insight into these
unique men (and one woman). Some possible characters would be Grenville
Dodge, Theodore and Anna Judah, Thomas “Doc” Durant, Charles Crocker, Collis
Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, the Casement brothers, James Harvey
Strobridge, Brigham Young, a “typical” Chinese and Irish track worker, etc.
– the list could go on and on.
For some of you who may not be familiar with Chautauqua,
it is a monologue presented by a person who is portraying a famous character.
They extensively study the person and then prepare and present a talk as
though they are the character come to speak to us today. After the
monologue, the audience is allowed to ask them questions and they respond
still in character. After this, the person steps out of character and
answers questions based upon their knowledge of the character from their
study. For a person like me who has not been strong in the history
area, it is a wonderful and exciting way to learn a lot of history and gain
insight into personalities and historical times/events.
I am sure a trip like this would not be cheap. My
idea would include the train being pulled by a steam locomotive, if possible,
having fine dining and accommodations on board, in addition to the educational
presentations, and side trips as appropriate to see important places associated
with the transcontinental railroad that would not normally be available from
the train such as Promontory Point, Bloomer Cut, Dale Creek Bridge, Cape
Horn, the Donner Summit tunnel, etc.
I am curious to hear if any of you think this could be
a possibility. Thanks for considering my idea! —Ruth Keesling [7/5/2002]

About
the discrepancy regarding the cause of death of CPRR Chief Engineer, Theodore
D. Judah, the CPRR.org website states typhoid fever as the cause of death,
whereas elsewhere it states: "November 2, 1863: Theodore Judah died
of Yellow Fever contracted in Panama while returning to California." Yellow
fever appears the stated cause of death in many secondary sources, however, we
concluded that typhoid fever was the actual cause documented
at the time based on the following primary source document: Memoriam on
the death of Chief Engineer Theodore D. Judah, 1863 which states "Died,
in New York, on Monday, November 2, 1863, of typhoid fever, Theodore D.
Judah, late of Sacramento, California, age 37 years." These were
common infectious diseases in 1863 which would have been well known and
a severe case causing death should have been easily diagnosable by Judah's
physicians in New York, with jaundice being typical with severe yellow
fever, but not with typhoid fever (both diseases can present with fever
and headaches, so it is possible that the initial diagnosis by the ship's
physician could have been uncertain). We are not aware of any other
copies of this Memoriam document which was passed down in the family from
Judah's assistant engineer Lewis Metzler Clement, so it is quite possible
that this primary source documentation was lost until published on the
CPRR.org website last year. The Memoriam is a single sheet of paper
folded in half to make an 8-1/2" x 11" flyer with 4 pages, each of which
is displayed as a separate image. The first image/page is blank except
for the cropped words of the document title. Don't know how the information
contained in the Memoriam was compiled, but it looks like a printed item
possibly for a memorial service – not a newspaper clipping. We're
also not sure if an 1863 shipboard diagnosis of "Panama Fever" was intended
to refer specifically to yellow fever. We would be interested if
there is other primary source documentation from 1863 that contradicts
typhoid fever as the cause of death.
>It's hard to say with any certainty whether it was typhoid or yellow
fever (diagnoses as well as anecdotal reports often mixed them up, and
the Memoriam is not a presiding physician's report but something written
3,000 miles away from the place of death); I've always thought typhoid,
given how rapidly his headache came on while barely shipped off from the
isthmus, but I see with no end of irritation that a sentence in my book
intended to leave the question open seems to lean toward "essence of anopheles"
[which unfortunately was changed when the book was edited]. My advice
is to leave it to one or another of the two until something medical or
even a ship's log from New York turns up, if ever. It's dicey; even Anna
[Judah]'s recollection of the timing of Ted's symptoms was written long
after the fact, though of course very compellingly. —David Bain

Crocker, Charles, 1822-1888.
Title: Facts obtained from the lips of Charles Crocker, regarding his identification
with the Central Pacific Railroad, and other roads growing of it : dictation
and related material assembled in preparing his biography for H.H. Bancroft's
Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth ..., 1865-1890.
Description: 19 folders in box.
partial microfilm reel (404 exposures) : negative (Rich. 98:3) and positive.
Contents: copies of Crocker's statement; Mrs. Crocker's letter of thanks
for the original; recollections of G.B.V. DeLamater concerning overland journey
(1850)
with Crocker; Rev. J.A. Benton's draft of his eulogy of Crocker (portion on verso
of a letter from Ira P. Rankin); copies of letters (1865) from L.L. Robinson
and A.A. Sargent concerning T.D. Judah and the railroad; dictation from L.M.
Clement; notes by Frances F. Victor; drafts of biography by Alfred Bates and
others; notes from Bancroft, G.H. Morrison and other History Company staff; copy
of tribute by "A Sacramento Pioneer" and newspaper articles concerning
Mr. and Mrs. Crocker.
Note: Also available on microfilm.
Format: Archive/Manuscript
Library: UC Berkeley

What
kinds of gifts were exchanged at the meeting of the two tracks?It's hard to know exactly what to believe about the details of the
joining of the rails ceremony as much of the information comes from newspaper
articles that were written and filed just before May 8th when the ceremony
was originally scheduled (the ceremony actually took place on May 10th).
See what is generally regarded as the definitive article on the subject
by Bowman to which the CPRR Museum
has added an illustration pertinent to your question. The golden
"last spike" had a gold nugget at its tip that was broken off and made
into a very limited number of gifts. This included 7
miniature golden spikes which were watch fobs (charms for a pocket
watches), and possibly also several finger
rings. We don't know exactly when these few souvenir gifts were
presented.
What happened to the Chinese after they helped build the First Transcontinental Railroad? Where did they go?
Not aware of any detailed records about the Chinese after
the completion of the
first transcontinental railroad.
Many of the Chinese continued to work for the
railroad – the Southern Pacific
RR was building south to Los Angles. Others having earned the money that they
needed to be relatively wealthy by the local standards in Canton (their original
hope)
returned
to
their families in China – and many stayed in San
Francisco or elsewhere in California as
miners or
in
various
service
occupations.
What
became of Fred Lightfoot's stereoview
collection?
According to Rusty Norton here is the scoop... The Fred Lightfoot Collection.
Fred took photos of stereos that he bought and sold. He sold two physical collections
to the George Eastman house. He left
behind only a small fistful of stereos. The negatives were eventually sold
to a photo archive.
...—Mary Ann
Mary Ann Sell, Vice-President,
International Stereoscopic Union;
Past President,
National Stereoscopic AssociationHow
do you restore rusted pieces of rail?>
You need to find a person with a stationary wire wheel grinder, you
will turn that grinder on, the wire wheel will whirl, and you will hold
that rail to the wheel until the rust is gone. This will take upwards
of 15 minutes to do a good job. When the rust is gone, the rail will
be dark grey, nearly black. This can be done with a wire wheel attached
to a drill motor, too, but the results are not as good, and it would take
an hour to do it right. Should you have a machine shop in your town, it
will have a wire wheel. Spray with clear varathane or some other
clear-in-a-can material; this is found in the hardware store for a couple
of bucks. —G.J. "Chris" GravesWhen did the Central Pacific quit using wood for locomotive fuel over the Sierra?
I don't have a date for the last use of wood over the Sierra. I do know that
SP was still using wood fuel on the Siskiyou route into the 20th century. On
4-8-0s, no less. There are several well-known photos of a head-on wreck involving
two 4-8-0s and a 4-6-0. The photos were taken by a Carmel photographer who happened
to be on the passenger train. Often misdated, the photos were taken in 1901.
So it's possible that SP went directly from wood to oil on the Sierra route,
and fairly likely that they did so on the Siskiyou route. However, I'm pretty
sure the SP did use coal over the Sierra (at least on some locomotives) – seems
to me I've seen a photo of some early Harriman 2-8-0s on the Hill burning coal.
—Kyle K. Wyatt,
Curator of History & Technology,
California State Railroad MuseumI
never came across any weekly, monthly, or annual tallies of injuries or
deaths during 14 years of work. That doesn't mean they don't exist.
E.B. Crocker and Mark Hopkins, the most dependable and regular letter-writers,
would occasionally write Huntington of a mishap, but never with identities.
Usually they got the numbers right when talking about Caucasians but seldom
troubled with the Chinese–usual reports were "3 white men and 15 or 20
Chinese." Most newspaper accident accounts I saw in the Sacramento
Union files at the California State Library did not list casualty names
either. —David BainCivil
War General Gouverneur Kemble Warren served with Lewis Clement on the Pacific
Railroad Commission. I would like to locate any personal letters
or diaries where Clement comments on his opinion of Warren while working
with him. Do you know of any such material, and how I might access
it?
I do not have any letters or diaries in my possession relating L.M.
Clement's views on G.K. Warren. I would, however, suggest that you
look at the Report from the Commissioners
of the Pacific Railroad Commission, January 14, 1869, (05/14/1869
- 05/17/1869). National Archives and Records Administration: NWCTC-48-RRPACKAGES-181-1;
Creating Org: Office of the Secretary of Interior. Lands and Railroads
Division} on which Warren and Clement served as two of its five members.
The other place I would suggest you look is our list
on Manuscript collections. In particular I would look at the
collection of Leland Stanford's papers, et al, and the Hopkins collections
located at the Green Library at Stanford University in which there are
many original letters and telegrams to, from, and about L.M. Clement relating
to these engineering matters and his service with Gen. Warren on the Special
Commission. (In addition you may want to look at the Reports of the
U.S. Pacific Railway Commission established by the Congress in 1887. —Bruce
C. CooperUnfortunately,
the original Jupiter and 119 no longer exist, but they were recreated as
life-size working replicas from photographs for the National Park Service's
Golden Spike National Historic Site at Promontory Summit, Utah. For
drawings of the reconstructed Jupiter and 119, see the reference in our
locomotive
FAQ. Another source
is the article "At Promontory, Utah, the message is repeated: 'It Is Done!'"
in Live Steam Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 3, March 1980, pp. 6-16.
Information about the Golden Spike National Historic site for which the
Jupiter was reconstructed can be found in the publication cited in our
Centennial Commission
FAQ.
One of the articles includes some information about the demise and recreation
of the Jupiter. There are some terrific May, 1869 views of the Jupiter
at the Great Salt Lake in our website's Heselton
Exhibit (the story behind how the Jupiter accidentally
became famous and why the Jupiter went back there on the [incorrect] date
engraved on the golden spike as the date the rails were joined is in David
Bain's wonderful book, "Empire Express").

The
Bailey article is indeed very interesting.
In some cases he seems very insightful, and I wonder his sources. For instance,
his explanation
for
Judah's departure from the SVRR in 1855 – disagreement with the SVRR
management – is what I've long suspected but for which I've seen no evidence
nor even suggested elsewhere in print. But then on the other hand, he seems
to miss the mark entirely – as in his account of the Sacramento Placer &
Nevada rail removal.
His dating of the mysterious meeting between Judah and Huntington is also
quite interesting – he places it five months after Judah's November 1860
report. There are several apparently-close-to-the-source accounts of this,
mostly dating it in December 1860 or January 1861. —Wendell Huffman
Thank you for including the Bailey article ... I had never
before run across either this article or William F. Bailey's book you refer to
at the end of the story and found Bailey's writings in many areas to be
more accurate than many of the histories written years later, some as late as
the year 2000. I was fascinated that he apparently had access to so much source
information not apparently available to historians then or much later and especially
so before the electronic age we all have become so used to. It is too bad
he did not make known his sources. I suspect after careful review of Bailey's
work a number of previously unknown or undiscovered bits of the Central Pacific's
history will be welcomed by those interested in this momentous period in our
history. William Francis Bailey's name and contribution certainly needs to be
added to the list of "must read" documents for any serious student
of the building of the first transcontinental railroad and I, for one, enjoyed
his 1908 "Story of the Central Pacific." —Ed Strobridge

Thanks
so much for your comments on this interesting article. ... I found
this article completely by accident on eBay. Like you
I had never heard of it
before. I am so pleased to find something so enlightening which had apparently
been all but lost for so many years and, through the internet, have been able
to make it available almost instantly to anybody in the world who is
interested. I
hope the information it contains makes its way back into general knowledge
base of the history of the Transcontinental railroad. I have been transcribing
and
adding a number of other documents, letters, and reports in recent weeks and
will keep you up to date as they are posted for your
additional comments. Thanks again! —Bruce C. Cooper

I first saw
the [William F. Bailey] Trans-Continental RR book about 15 years ago. It was
of special interest to me as it was printed in Fair Oaks, very
near my
home. I suspect it
is the same book mentioned in the article, the one by William F. Bailey. The
book I saw is housed in the collection of one of the great Western American
collectors, now a centenarian. I write as I distinctly remember the author
was in the employ
of the railroad, and was the Station Master (or some such title) of Fair Oaks
Station. It may be that his occupation provided sources not available to other
writers? If I were a detective, I would wonder if there was a connection between
William F. Bailey, and the Mr. Bailey of the Bailey House in Pilot Hill, maybe
a son?
It is a long shot; however, the locations are in close proximity. What makes
it interesting is the fact that Bailey would have had a special interest in
the CPRR. The Bailey House is known as Bailey’s Folly, built to catch
the business of a railroad that never arrived. Had the SVRR been extended to
Auburn, it is
likely his gamble would have paid off. The elder Mr. Bailey was eventually
bankrupted due to this error, among others.
Just a though…… —Dana Scanlon

Thanks for sharing
your thoughts on Wm. F. Bailey. I have a hunch that the story of Wm. Bailey
might just turn out to be an interesting one. Here are
a couple
more thoughts that might be a part of the story.
In Stanford's June 1, 1863 1st Annual Report to the Secretary of the Treasury
lists James Bailey, living in Sacramento City, as a stockholder in the Central
Pacific Railroad Company of California as well as one of the nine members of
the Board of Directors.
William F. Bailey mentions James Bailey (pg. 7) as "a Sacramento jeweler" having
been brought in by Judah, his personal friend, and originally acted as secretary
of the company, but he, too, dropped out, either seared or "frozen."
George Kraus mentions Bailey (pg. 27) as being the person who introduced Leland
Stanford, for the first time, to Theodore Judah. Stanford goes on to say "The
first time my attention was called to the question of construction was by a
gentleman by the name of James Bailey who was afterwards the secretary of the
Central Pacific."
I realize that Bailey is a common name but I doubt that many Baileys were connected
to or interested in some way in the Central Pacific. I also wonder if these
two men were related in some way. Bruce Cooper lists Wm. F. Bailey's birth
year as 1861 and I suppose that it is possible he was James son or a nephew
or ???. There could
have been some kind of relationship as I imagine that some of the source documents
could have come from Bailey the jeweler. All speculation of course but it can
be a small world and there may be a story to tell. The California Death Record
Index may list Wm. F. Bailey if he died in California after 1905 and perhaps
his
obituary
would tell the story of this nearly unknown early CP historian.
James Bailey, Wm. Francis Bailey, the Bailey House, all connected in some way
to the Central Pacific. Sacramento,
Fair Oaks and Pilot Hill all in close proximity. One can only wonder but I'd
bet there is a story to tell and William F. Bailey needs to be added to the
list of Central Pacific historians.
My Great Great Grandfather is also listed in the 1863 report as one of the
stockholders of the CP but have no idea what became his stock. —Ed
Strobridge

"Militaristic UP:
There has been some mention ... about the militaristic
organization of the UP in its early stages. The point that is forgotten
that almost all the early major construction projects in this country
were under the supervision of men who had military tanning. The oldest
engineering school in the country Norwich University graduated Civil
Engineers with a commission in the Army's Corp of Engineers. West Point
a military academy was an engineering school. Almost every College and
University trained its graduates in the basics of being a military
officer (this was required of gentlemen at the time).
Almost all the generals of the Civil War were civil engineers
(the other disciplines had not yet been invented) with the remainder
predominantly from the clergy. Prior to the conflict between the states
many West Point trained engineers worked at building railroads. Among
the best known are George Washington Whistler (Western Railroad of
Massachusetts) and George B. McClellan (Illinois Central). Other West
Point graduates involved in railroad construction include William T.
Sherman and Braxton Bragg.
In fact the logistics of a major construction project and a
military campaign are very similar. Logistics is the art of supplying
the troops (work force) with their needs, when they need it, where they
need it, and in the quantity needed. Jack Casement and Greenville Dodge
of the Union Pacific had perfected logistics during their campaigns
during the war. The Central Pacific's Big Four quickly learned and
perfected this science and perfected it in the push across Nevada and
Utah. Without logistical abilities no major project can be accomplished."
—Henry H. Deutch,
Osceola County, FL[from the R&LHS Newsgroup]A recent
issue of American
Heritage [has] a great article "Terror of Trains
– It helped show the way to modern psychotherapy." by Michelle Stacey ... August/September
2003. It's about train phobia in the 19th century as one of the most influential
reasons why psychiatry/psychology became accepted.
—Carlos Fernandez-Gray
Berkeley CA"The
[Jupiter's] 4-4-0 wheel arrangement was originated by Henery Campbell,
chief engineer of the Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railway,
in 1836. Like it's predecessors, it was a little more than a boiler
on wheels. Over the next 15 years, many modifications were tried with few
being successful. In 1852 Rogers, Ketchum, and Grosvenor of Patterson,
NJ combined the best of these ideas and produced the design which would
define locomotive construction for almost a century. All the major builders
of the time quickly adopted the Rogers 4-4-0 design. Dubbed the 'American
Standard' locomotive and later referred to simply as 'American,' it dominated
US rails for more than 30 years."

In
the Placer Herald newspaper, printed in Auburn, JULY 29, 1865, there is a legal
notice re: the sale of land and lots, in COLFAX, CAL. Our wonderment surfaces
as to when Camp 20/Alder Grove/Illinois Town became COLFAX?
In a book of press releases, "ACROSS THE CONTINENT" by
Samuel Bowles,
printed
in 1865, the following dates and places are furnished as to
the whereabouts of the "Colfax Party."
Mr. Colfax gives a speech at Central City, Colo. May 27, 1865.
Mr. Colfax gives a speech at Great Salt Lake City, U. T. June 12, 1863
Mr. Colfax gives a speech in Virginia City, Nevada, June 26, 1863
Virginia City, Nev., June 28, 1865, coming West via the Placerville Route, is
a byline.
The Party arrives in San Francisco July 4, 1865.
Mr. Colfax gives a speech in San Francisco, July 8
By line Portland, Ore. July 20
By line, Portland Ore. July 23
By line, Olympia, Wash. Terr. July 26
By line, Victoria, Vancouver Island, July 28
By line, San Francisco, Aug 2
By line, :Yosemite Valley, Aug 11
By line, San Francisco, August 18
By line, San Francisco, August 20 In this story, under that byline,
Mr. Bowles writes: "Our party made a very profitable and interesting excursion
over the route of the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento to Donner Lake,
on the eastern slope of the mountains, by special train and coaches, ........the
track is graded and laid, and trains are running to the new town of Colfax (named
for the Speaker)......"
The very next byline August 28, with the party in San Francisco; On Sept 1, 1865,
Speaker Colfax gives a farewell speech.
With all the above firmly in place, the Placer Herald, a newspaper in Auburn,
Cal. reports that RAILS REACHED COLFAX on Sept. 1, and trains
began running Sept. 4, 1865, 10 days AFTER Bowles said he rode the rails to Colfax.
All of that being said, we know from the July 29, 1865 notice that Colfax was
called Colfax by July 29, this some 30 days BEFORE Mr. Colfax could have been
there.Does anyone know the answer to this riddle?
I have read the Placer Co. newspapers from June 1, 1865 to November 15, 1865,
the only mention of the "Colfax Party" is a negative comment
in the Placer Herald in November, saying the trip was a waste of time and money.
The Colfax Historical Society does not have a date for the naming of the town,
nor a date of the visit of the "Colfax Party."
The History of Placer Co., Thompson and West, 1885, is silent on this issue.
RUMOR in Colfax is that Leland Stanford was with the Party when they arrived
in
Colfax, no one claims to have proof of such a visit, as to date.—G J Chris Graves, NewCastle, AltaCal'a

EUREKA! The July 11, 1865 Sacramento Union says that the Colfax
party arrived
via
boat at Sacramento from San Francisco at 8 am on July 11, and will leave by special
train at 4 pm, July 11, 1865 for the end of the rail. On July 12, 1865,
the Dutch Flat Messenger says that the Colfax Party arrived here by stage coach.
(No mention
of Crocker nor Stanford, who rode the cars with the Speaker)
So, Speaker Colfax was in Camp 20, to be renamed COLFAX on the afternoon of the
11th, or the morning of the 12th, or, he could have stayed overnight ... anywhere
in the vicinity. As to Illinoistown being renamed COLFAX, Illinoistown is 3 miles
or so WEST of Colfax, and that area, behind Sierra Chevrolet, is STILL
called Illinoistown. Ah, the perils of history. —G J Chris Graves,
NewCastle,
AltaCal'a

Reilly
#240 is a most curious image view of flooded Sacramento.
I wonder whether the scene was taken following the 1862-63 floods and CP
groundbreaking. Obviously the scene was shot just north of the Sac
City Water Works/City Hall, at a point (almost precisely) where today's
CSRM turntable lead is located. The amount of standing water, mud and wintery
"air" suggests little else. What I can't see, because of the 2 freight
cars in the left background, is whether the CPRR passenger depot is there
or under construction. The signature telegraph pole which anchored
the depot's freight platform/scales on the northeast corner is clearly
there. The pole's height, designed to elevate telegraph wires to the depots
roof and smoke clerestories (for conveyance into the depot proper further
south within the building) suggests that the depot is there, just invisible
to the camera/viewer. —Kevin V. Bunker, Student Assistant, California
State
Archives

At
California
State Archives I get to pull and refile some pretty wonderful stuff
on a regular basis. Among some catalogued but rarely seen "discoveries" is a glorious
ink-on-linen CPRR surveyed route map which covers the proposed line between Dutch
Flat and Donner Summit, with the line terminating
in the vicinity of Cold Stream Canyon and Coburns/Truckee. Its dimensions
are equally awesome, measuring roughly 30 feet long by about 3 feet
high. This particular map is in very good condition, contains specific
property or parcels adjacent to or to be condemned by the CPRR for right
of way, and is signed as drawn by T.D. Judah at Sacramento in 1863.
The section alone showing Donner Lake is quite fascinating. Other linen
maps by other cartographers/engineers (for what became CPRR subsidiaries)
exist at CSA – such as the first Western Pacific, the San Francisco &
San Jose, and the California Pacific. The bulk of railroad maps at CA State
Archives are part of the Public Utilities Commission/CA Railroad Commission
records group. The Archives reference desk maintains an index for public
use. These maps, however are NOT digitized or available on-line. Anyone
truly interested in serious, in-depth study of early California railroad
history owes themselves a visit to the State Archives to request a viewing
of this rare and special documents. These and other records are easily
requested and pulled for patrons after a simple registration process. The
California State Archives, 1020 O Street (at Archives Plaza on Regional
Transit's light rail line) is open to the public Mondays thru Fridays,
between the hours of 9:30 to 4:00 p.m. Telephone 916-653-2246 directly,
during the hours shown above, for reference assistance or contact CSA via
e-mail: ArchivesWeb@www.ss.ca.gov.
Keep up the great job! —Kevin V. Bunker, Student Assistant, California
State Archives

Do
you have any signed Judah material in the CPRR Museum?
This website includes two items
which belonged to T.D. Judah. These are Part II of the “Message
from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress”
for 1854-55 which includes the Annual Report of the Secretary of War for
1854, and Part III of the “Message from the President of the United States
to the Two Houses of Congress” for 1857-58. Both books are marked with
Judah's tiny (1 cm. by 2 cm.) Sacramento bookplate, and the 1854-55 volume
also includes Theodore Judah's signature in pencil on the title page.
These volumes were a part of Judah’s personal library which was left to
his widow, Anna Pierce Judah, upon his death in November, 1863, and remained
in the Pierce family home in Greenfield, MA, until what was left of his
library was broken up about 1980. We also have an original C.E. Watkins
marked and mounted print of the famous portrait
that Watkins made of Judah as well as the four page "Memoriam"
issued by the CPRR upon his death in November, 1863. Both the Watkins
portrait of Judah and the Judah "Memoriam" belonged to Lewis
M. Clement who was hired by Judah in the Spring of 1863 and served
as the First Assistant Chief Engineer of the CPRR from 1863 to 1881.
Between 1863 and 1869 L.M. Clement had, among his many other duties, primary
charge of the design, location and construction of the CPRR sections which
were built over the Sierra Nevada mountains from Colfax to Truckee, and
also the last 200 miles across eastern Nevada and into Utah to Promontory
Summit. Clement also served the CPRR for many years as its Superintendent
of Track. —Bruce C. CooperI
have a friend who purchased a metal buffalo head that supposedly came off
the front of a locomotive. It apparently had two spears arranged
in an X pattern thru the head. It came from the Skelly's ranch in
Tulsa and according to the caretaker had hung in the lodge for many years.
Do you have any idea what locomotive it could have come from?— tquillHeadlight trophies and ornamentation.
Headlamps occasionally received additional decorations at the hands
of a locomotive crew. This was most common on lines where engines
were assigned to regular crews and received personal attention. After
the middle 1880s, pooling locomotives on larger routes discouraged personal
details, but smaller lines and branch lines allowed regular crews - and
occasional ornamentation - to continue to the end of steam. The most common
headlamp decorations were literally trophies - racks of antlers that offered
testimony to the hunting prowess of the engineer or fireman. Handsome,
masculine and symbolic of virility, antlers were also used as symbols of
achievement; on steamboats, antlers - sometimes gilded - were awarded like
the Blue Ribbon of Atlantic liners to vessels that made fast runs.
A exceptionally large rack, like that mounted on Union Pacific No. 23 in
1867, is also tribute to the transitory nature of frontier - animals capable
of such triumphs would be seen less and less as railroads and Sharps' rifles
moved into their land. More modest but equally handsome antlers adorned
the lamp of Virginia & Truckee's express locomotive No. 11 when it
pulled the best trains on the line. Antlers were typically mounted
above the lens, but sometimes below, framing the lamp like a wreath.
Skulls were usually discarded but occasionally used as well. Other ornaments
included stars, brass eagles (Best noted a UP engine with two, mounted
on each side of a lampshelf, with what he felt were red silk tassels in
their beaks), or enamel portraits framed in polished brass scrollwork and
hung from the shelf (a Delaware, Lackawanna & Western engine had this
detail in the 1890s). By the 1890s, Indians cut out of sheet metal
and mounted aiming forward with their arrows became popular and were used
well into the automobile age; their use echoed the radiator mascot. Masonic
stars and fraternal badges were as much badges of association as occasionally
obligatory tributes to the prevalent social hierarchy in the region.
Their use extended to the 1950s. No doubt, other materials
found their way onto the lampshelves, much of it homemade. In regards to
buffalo heads, it may well be so that this particular piece was mounted
on an engine, but without seeing the example its hard to say. Cowskulls
sometimes made it up there (not a good idea in the 19th century when the
association with rustling would have been considered bad taste) but by
the 1890s and 1920s they were as harmless as a Tom Mix Cadillac.
The buffalo head may also have been part of a special occasion decoration,
used for the fourth of July or similar events. The crossed arrows
motif, alongside the western style, make this a tasty piece of work, and
appropriate to the post 1890 era, which is also fitting for the era of
railroads in Oklahoma. — woodburnerErroneous
information about the construction of the first rail line south to Los Angeles,
its Golden Spike Ceremony at Lang, California, and the mythical twin of James
H. Strobridge.
I have encountered [the website
with the "Story of the Golden Spike at Lang Station."
by Gerald M. Best.
From the Golden Spike Centennial Souvenir Program Sept. 5, 1976.]
before and was appalled at the errors and just plain sloppiness in the writing
of this
article. First, Gerald Best meant James H.
Strobridge but wrote "Charles Strobridge" a man who never existed.
Then he had him placed in the Tehachapi Mountains when in fact James H. Strobridge
had no
part of building south of Goshen on the Southern Pacific. He had earlier built
a
20
mile
section
of the SP south
to Goshen in 1872 and from there returned to the northern part of the State while
others, Engineer William Hood for one, continued to build the SP south over the
mountains. James H. Strobridge retired to his newly acquired ranch in Castro
Valley in 1874 but was called back in late 1875 by Charles Crocker to take over
the construction
of Southern Pacific south from San Fernando to Spadra (Pomona) replacing the
Superintendent who had gotten in trouble and who Crocker relieved. He completed
that work in 1876. He had no part in the construction of the 7,000 San Fernando
tunnel
reported as solid rock when in fact the tunnel was well known as a "mud tunnel" and
extremely unstable as a result. The difficulties encountered in boring this "mud" tunnel
delayed the Southern Pacific for quite awhile and finally on Sept. 6, 1876 the
line from Goshen over the Tehachapi's through the tunnel to Lang which connected
with the piece James H. Strobridge had just completed to Spadra was opened to
traffic. I have talked to others about all the errors in Gerald Best's rendition
of the
Golden Spike Ceremony at Lang, California and no one seems to have an answer
as it was not like Best to be so careless. He was a meticulous researcher and
I have always found his writings to be quite accurate. Perhaps he got in a hurry
when asked to write the story for the program and relied too much on his memory
and the use of newspaper stories rather than check his facts.
—Edson T. StrobridgeI
have a model Central Pacific 34' Overton coach made by Roundhouse Products (their
number 8503). It is marked Central Pacific on the roof and Truckee along the
body side. Is this is a good copy? Was there a Truckee shop that supplied the
CPRR?
First, the MDC Overton coach is roughly based on the Sierra Railway coach #6
built in 1902 by Holman of San Francisco specifically for use on the Sierra's
Angels Branch. The car and sister combine #5 are preserved at Railtown 1897 State
Historic Park in Jamestown, near Sonora in the Mother Lode country. Neither the
Central Pacific nor the Virginia & Truckee
had anything like the coach. I have seen occasional cars on other railroads (mostly
short lines) that are of approximately similar size.
Model Die Casting (aka Roundhouse) often painted their cars in fictitious paint
schemes that they thought were attractive – even when lettering the Overton cars
for the Sierra Railway.
At a guess, the Truckee lettering on the side of the car is intended to be a
name for the car, rather than a shop where it was built.
The Central Pacific had some car repair shops in Truckee for minor repairs, but
the major shops of the company were in Sacramento, and major ones also in Los
Angeles, and during the early years (1860s - early 1870s) in San Francisco for
the Southern Pacific (before those SP functions were centralized in Sacramento).
—Kyle K. Wyatt,
Curator of History & Technology,
California State Railroad MuseumDo
you have any recommended books about the many irish laborers who built the
railroad? — Ed
J. Langley, Phoenix
Most of the Irish workers on the first transcontinental railroad worked
for the Union Pacific. Bruce Cooper recommends 'UNION PACIFIC: The
Birth of a Railroad 1862-1893" by Maury Klein (Doubleday, 1987) especially
pp. 66-67, 217-219, 224, 238. David Bain's book "Empire Express"
is excellent. Another possible source is Grenville M. Dodge's "How
We Build the Union Pacific Railroad." These and other books on the
transcontinental railroad or specifically the Union Pacific Railroad listed
on our books page would also include information
about the Irish railroad workers.
Summit
Tunnel rail.
The hole in the top of Summit Tunnel is about twenty feet square–I
say about because I cannot measure it. The hole is easily 60 feet
from the tunnel floor, and the top of the hole is covered with a steel
sheet that exceeds the inside dimensions of the hole. The original
rail that covered the hole, put in place in 1867 or so, was pear shaped
rail, original construction. That original covering rail was torn
off in the early 1990's, and was replaced with the steel sheet that covers
the hole today. The original rail was tossed off to the side. Some
5 or 6 rails are still there today. The original rail was puffed
on by every steam train from 1867 on, then by every diesel until the 1990's,
it is in pretty rough shape. Barely 40% of it remains, the rest rusted
off. Don't forget, every snow storm or rain storm hit that rail for
over 130 years. That moisture, plus the eroding of the rail from
the smoke and diesel really hit it hard. —G.J. "Chris" Graves, Newcastle,
CaliforniaSept
9, 1869, via the Central Pacific Telegraph Co.
To Leland Stanford—
Our Special train time table on WPRR requires trains to make twenty
miles per hour over unfinished track with no allowance for stoppages.
This will require a rate of twenty five (25) to thirty (30) miles per hour
running time this is positively unsafe.
S.S. Montague Chief Engineer
Several
of us have been interested in the Danforth (and Danforth & Cooke)
singles (4-2-4T and a few 2-2-4T) that were built in the late 1850s and 1860s.
It appears there were three on the Central Pacific - CP 3, 4, 93 (including
one
second hand from the San Francisco & Oakland), and two more on the Oregon
Steam Navigation, later Oregon Railway & Navigation. Any idea what the
construction numbers were? (While we are at it, any construction numbers for
the six 2-6-0s built for the Central Pacific in 1865? Also several 4-4-0s for
the San
Francisco & San Jose.)
Of these five 4-2-4Ts, the C. P. Huntington (Central Pacific #3, later
Southern Pacific #1) is preserved at the California State Railroad Museum in
Sacramento, but the fate of the others is less clear. CP #4 and #93 were converted
to 4-2-2 tender engines, and one of them went to Vancouver Island. Tradition
says this was CP #4, but some evidence suggests it might have been CP #93.
Whichever it is, what became of the other? Some sources say sold to Union Coal,
but whether this is a California operation by that name, or if it is another
name for the Vancouver Island operation is not clear. One older source says
one was sold to the Hawaiian Sugar Company (or perhaps not capitalized as a
formal name).
Of the two Oregon engines, one was sold to Mexico, but I don't know what
became of the other. ... Central Pacific 2nd 93 was a Danforth 4-2-4T originally
built for the San Francisco & Oakland, later rebuilt by CP as a 4-2-2.
—Kyle Williams Wyatt [Historian
/ Curator, California State Railroad Museum][from the R&LHS Newsgroup]Rose
Bud April 6th 69 Mark Hopkins
From my observation at the Promontory I believe the Central Pacific
and Union Pacific tracks will meet at the rock cuts on the Eastern slope
of the Promontory. The U.P. cannot get their cut out before we get
there with the track, I think Huntington ought to know this. I am
on my way home.
C. Crocker
Comments
regarding experimentally testing the possibility of using
baskets at Cape Horn.
The
discussion on this matter continues, as it is difficult to prove a negative.
...
this particular question could likely be solved with a scientific approach.
The hypothesis would not address the necessity of the baskets, or practical
use of
the baskets; rather, it would test the very possibility of using a basket on
a 75-degree shale slope. For a casual observer, especially someone from the
flatlands that has not spent many years in the High Sierra, it may seem possible.
To me,
it does not. If [someone] is confident that it is in fact possible, maybe he
will be willing to volunteer for such an experiment? I will volunteer to go
over-the-side on a rope as far as he descends in a basket; though I suspect
his descent could
be much, much more rapid than mine. You may have to dispatch a party to recover
him from the river. Another consideration: Had baskets been used, it is
likely Alfred Hart would have made a photographic record of such an event,
as it would have made
for a
very interesting photograph. Remember, he was not only documenting the construction
of the railroad, but was also selling pictures of interest to the general
public. Had the claim been made that such baskets were used on the nearly vertical
slopes of Donner Summit, it may give one cause to consider the possibility.
But no such
claim has been made, most probably due to the fact that it did not occur. ...
Did Hart witness the construction of the road bed around Cape Horn? It is likely
we will never know, just as it is likely you will never be able to prove the
use of baskets. But with consideration of the fact that he began documenting
the construction during the early stages, including parts of the first 21 miles,
and with consideration of the fact that he documented the road bed construction
along the way, including sites not too distant from Cape Horn, and with consideration
of the fact that he had special dispensation with the railroad, I would say
yes he probably had the opportunity. Remember, the blasting on Cape Horn didn't
last
a day, it took a bit of time. I just don't know that Hart perceived it as a
monumental event; it was better fodder for the dime novelists. And could he
have positioned himself to take photos on the construction on Cape Horn? Actually,
I think he could have walked right out on Cape Horn and
taken
the shot. The shot he took of Summit Camp was from a perspective every bit
as harrowing. As for alternative sites, the location of the Cape Horn Bar comes
to mind. Keep in mind, his equipment included a long lens. He used it at Summit
Valley (compare Hart
#109 and #109A) and many other locations. With the long lens
used in #109, I can make out a road station at least twice the distance of
the Cape Horn Bar shot. Also, he could have approached from the bottom. There
was
a well used road (Stevens Trail) to that location. An approach from the bottom
would not be nearly so rough as the approach to Hart
#179. At the base of Cape Horn, it would be quite easy to document the construction
just a quarter of
a mile away. A lot of hoopla was made about the construction of the road bed
through Bloomer Cut as it was the first major obstacle. With today's equipment,
it would not
be a relatively easy job. The second major obstacle was Cape Horn, so news
hungry eastern writers tried to make that a big deal. Of course, the real obstacle
lay
ahead. Even with today's equipment, the road bed over the Donner Summit would
be a big deal. Have you ever been to these places? If you [are] confident the
Chinese used baskets on Cape Horn, are you will to participate in an experiment?
I
would be more than happy to document an attempted descent
over the side of Cape Horn in a basket. I may or may not use a rope for my
descent, as a younger man I am quite sure I could have made the trip without
it. I am
confident that such an experiment would debunk this story forever. ... I suggest
an experiment as I am confident it would go a long way in debunking this story.
I would assert that it is impossible to use a basket on Cape Horn. If
a rope is tethered to one's waist, or if a boson's chair or harness is used,
the person descending has full use of the legs and can control the attitude
of the body. By contrast, if one were to attempt a descent in a basket, be
it sitting or standing, they would have no such control. The occupant of the
basket would not be able to control the attitude of the body and thus would
be forced forward into the slope. If the occupant leaned backward in an attempt
to control the attitude of the body, as one would do on a rope, it is
likely the basket would not move, or would tumble end for end. It would not
progress in a smooth descending manner. If the intended descent was on a slope
of 85 degrees or greater, the use of a basket might be feasible. Did
you ever notice the artist's depiction's of the supposed event? They
usually depict slopes of 90 degrees or so. There is good reason for that, they
can't make
it believable if the slope is 75 degrees. ...
Secondly, why would they use baskets? It would be a simple, non-time consuming
task to step over the side, use a pick create a small working platform,
and then place explosives so to create a larger working area. I think this can
be easily demonstrated. If I were to tackle the blasting of Cape Horn, with the
use of materials available at the time, I would start at the highest point in
the cut and work downward and to the sides. It would not take many charges to
create sizable work area on that shale hillside. As the progress moved to the
sides it would facilitate the movement of crews so that they would be out of
harm's way as charges were set on the opposite side. So, why would someone go
to the trouble of trying to use a basket? They did not blast cuts from bottom
to top, rather it was top to bottom. These people were not stupid, they did
great things with relatively primitive tools. I suspect the basket stories would
have provided a good source of humor for those hearty fellows. —Dana
ScanlonSince
the SP removed some of the double track over Donner Summit before its acquisition
by the UP, why does the UP still run "left-handed" through Truckee
and all the way to Sparks, NV? The transitions from single to double track
provide many opportunities to get back on the right side. ... —Vern
Waight
> On the SP between Sparks and Truckee, the
Left side is the "right" side. Block signals are all laid out that way.
Why spend the money to move the whole block system for little reason
other than aesthetics.
—Tom Irion
Walnut Creek, Calif.
> ... the track used westbound may be the one with easier grades. If the
SP
had it signaled for that direction of traffic, that would keep it that
way.
On the west slope, the eastbound (upgrade) track is to the left from
Rocklin (next town above Roseville) where it bridges the eastbound
track, to Tunnel 27 near Applegate, where it crosses back. Although
separated by considerable distances elsewhere, the two tracks come
together at the viaduct and Tunnel 18 at Newcastle. The line is mostly
just block signaled for the normal current of traffic, with only limited
exceptions. To permit the "Capitol" service to use the same station in
both directions at Auburn (where the eastbound and westbound tracks are on opposite
sides of town), a bit of CTC [Centralized
Train Control System] was installed
from
Rocklin to a set of crossovers just above Auburn (probably at Caltran expense).
The line
is
single track for 8 miles from Emigrant Gap to Shed 10, and again from
the west portal of summit Tunnel 42 about 4 miles to Lakeview. These
sections are CTC controlled, and the double track between them must also
be as it is signaled for reverse traffic. I'm not sure whether there is
signaling for reversed traffic from Lakeview to Truckee, but this
section is operated left handed ...
—Hank Raudenbush
> ... it is probably because the ABS system [Automatic
Block Signals] is set
up that way. Reverse-signalled
CTC has not been installed there - yet (if ever).
—Tom Matoff
[More about Railroad
Signaling and Railroad
Traffic Control Systems.]
> ... the original historical reason for the track usage was for the most favorable
grades in both directions.
—Adrian Ettlinger[Inquiry and responses all from the R&LHS Newsgroup]Elevation
Drop from Cape Horn to the valley below.
There is a concrete railing that surrounds Cape Horn. Mounted
on that concrete railing is a United States Bureau of Land Management survey
marker, showing an elevation of exactly 2,487 feet above sea level.
On the banks of the American River below Cape Horn, the U.S. Bureau of
Land Management team measured the mean elevation to be 1,155 feet above
sea level and placed a brass marker to that effect. Thus the difference
between the railroad tracks and the River is exactly 1,332 feet.
The valley below Cape Horn is called Green Valley by the people that live
there. (The U.S.G.S. topographic map calls it Burnt Flat.)
You have to walk up hill from the River to Burnt Flat/Green Valley.
The elevation difference, from the River to the edge of Burnt Flat/Green
Valley is 1,600 feet, as marked on the Colfax Quadrangle, California, 7.5
minute Series Topographic Map. That means that the perpendicular
drop off Cape Horn to Burnt Flat/Green Valley is just 887 feet. —G.J. "Chris" Graves,
Newcastle, CaliforniaFrom:
California History Section <cslcal@library.ca.gov>

Anything listed as Rare Book, NC or CS does not circulate and there
is no
photocopying from Rare Book items. However, the microfilm #549,
Reel 100,
will circulate on inter-library loan through your local library or
institution's library.

What
is the length on the transcontinental railroad?The first transcontinental railroad was 1776 miles long from Omaha,
Nebraska to Sacramento, California (an easy American number to remember).
The exact mileage varies over time as the railroad line was later realigned
to slightly improve the route. You can get a different answer if
you instead measure the length from Council Bluffs, Iowa or to Oakland
or San Francisco, California, but the above answer is as originally built.
A more precise number (to the foot) is on our homepage.
They actually measured every foot of the entire route with a surveyor's
chain (see the construction reports).
Another
source records the distance as follows: Central Pacific comprised
742 miles of line from Sacramento, California to Ogden, Utah. Union Pacific
comprised 1,032 miles of line from Omaha, Nebraska to Ogden, Utah. Total
length of the first transcontinental railroad from Sacramento, California
to Omaha, Nebraska was 1,774 miles.
Weitfle
stereoview #251. Original Hanging bridge. General Grant's train.
DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas has this
view in their collection. Here's what they have in their files concerning
this stereoview, and bridge: "Past the minuscule station at Hanging
Bridge, the Royal Gorge narrows down to such an extent that nothing short
of an atomic blast could provide a ledge upon which to build a railroad.
As early as 1878, the Rio Grande and Santa Fe were in the midst of armed
as well as legal conflict to determine which one would occupy the floor
of the cañon, and be the first to enjoy the rich traffic flow to
and from Leadville. The Rio Grande succeeded in winning this conflict,
and thus became the first company to bring its steel into the Carbonate
Camp. Simultaneously, its original ambitions to build into Santa
Fe and then far south to Mexico City were put permanently to rest.
The Santa Fe seized Raton Pass, thereby assuring its triumphal march west
to the coast, but never became a factor in the service of the mountain
mining camps, save during its short-lived and abortive ownership of the
Colorado Midland. ... The train is the special train returning from Leadville,
run for General and ex-President U.S. Grant."
What
is glue streaking?

This composite image shows glue streaking on two stereographs. This is most prominent
on the wall of the vertical structure next to the ferry Solano
(left) and on the roof of the San Francisco residence (right). A series of black
parallel lines drawn on the images point to the streaking and show the orientation
of the alternating increased and decreased density which is thought to be damage
to the albumen emulsion due to chemical interaction with the glue used to attach
the image to the cardboard mount. The streaking likely results from the pattern
of the glue application to the back of the print from a glue brush, possibly due
to sulfur compounds in the glue. Glue streaking is one of the most troublesome
types of damage because it extremely difficult or impossible to remove when doing
digital restoration. Having such
artifacts which differ between the left and right image can also be disconcerting
when seen in the stereo viewer where each eye sees one of the two images of the
stereo pair. (Just how bothersome varies widely from person to person and depends
in part both on the exact configuration of the image defects as well as which
of the observer's two eyes is more dominant.)What is the most recent train acquisition in the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento?
The most recent full-size railroad acquisition by CSRM is probably Central Pacific
2-6-2T #233, acquired from Pacific Locomotive Association. Several other
acquisitions are in process. Other recent acquisitions include SP SD45T-2
#6819 and Amtrak F40PH #281. —Kyle K. Wyatt, Curator of History & Technology,
California
State Railroad Museum [11-22-2004]Pourriez-vous
me dire quel est le nom de la première compagnie de Chemin de fer en CALIFORNIE
??? [What is the name of the first California RR?]
SACRAMENTO VALLEY RAILROAD – 1856
Theodore Dehone Judah was the chief engineer, lobbyist, railroader, and surveyor for the Central Pacific Railroad. He was born in 1826 in Bridgeport, Connecticut and lived until 1863, when he died in New York without seeing the completion of his dream, the first transcontinental railroad. In 1854, he was asked by Charles Wilson, President of the Sacramento Valley Railroad, to survey. He finished the SACRAMENTO VALLEY RAILROAD, California’s first railroad, in 1856.America's
First, First Railroad, in 1795, by Frederick C. Gamst
While crossing my fingers, I began an article with: "On Boston's Beacon
Hill, around 1805, the first railroad in the United States was constructed and
operated." My qualms concerned a number of undocumented statements that,
in 1795, an inclined-plane railroad operated on Beacon Hill to transport bricks
from a kiln at the summit down to the level of the city.[1] The statements,
however, did not make business sense. Brick makers would not find atop the hill
the clay for making and fuel for firing their product. Why drag these heavy
materials uphill and transport loads of bricks downhill, when conducting the
entire production below in the city would make greater business profit?
Brickyards are not built on hilltops.

For several years before writing the "First Railroad" article, I
searched to no avail all manner of Boston sources for evidence of the uneconomic
railroad of 1795. Recently while doing research [at the Library of Congress]
on labor relations in the
Locomotive Engineers' Monthly Journal, serendipity, not scholarship, rewarded
my quest. This journal of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers reprinted,
without
any date, a letter to the Boston Advertiser.[2] A "W. G." from Windham,
Maine wrote the following. His letter explained both the location of the brickyard
and the true nature of the railroad.

Referring to the line of 1805, discussed in his "First Railroad" article,
W. G. related: "It may perhaps be interesting to your readers to know that
this same railway and cars, or others of similar construction, were used on
Beacon Hill several years previous." W. G. received his information from Edward
Howe of Portland Maine, who was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1783.
Edward's father, Abraham Howe, was a brick maker with a brickyard and house at
the base of Beacon Hill at Adams Street. (No such street now exists in central
Boston, but until recently an Adams Place was just north of the hill, at
Anderson Street, immediately north of Cambridge Street.) By team and wagon,
in
1795, the Howes hauled uphill from their kilns "one-hundred thousand" bricks.
Their destination was the construction site of the new, golden-domed Statehouse
of architect Charles Bulfinch.

Edward Howe said that before the laying of the cornerstone for the
Statehouse, on July 4, 1795 by former governor Samuel Adams, the precipitous
apex of Beacon Hill was cut down about 20 feet to provide a level construction
site.
The excavated earth went down to Beacon Street's "foot," or lower part,
then
on the east bank of the Charles River. "[I]n this work a railway of wood,
of
about two feet gauge, conveyed loaded cars to the foot of Beacon Street,
drawing up at the same time a train of empty cars by a rope over a pulley."
Thus an inclined plane of a British model operated on the hill. It consisted
of a
wooden, double track on a self-acting plane powered by gravity, undoubtedly
using a braking devise on the drum of the upper pulley.[3] Howe had "the
impression that there was a thin plate of iron on the track [rails] of the Beacon
Hill Railway, although he is not certain." To reduce wear to the head of
the wooden rails, typical strap-iron plates could have been nailed on them. This,
however, would not be cost effective for a temporary contractor's line,
disassembled after a few months of removing the hill's apex.

W. G. thinks, in 1805, the Proprietors of Mount Vernon employed the
contractor, track, and cars used to remove the apex for their second railroad
used to remove most of the other two summits of Beacon Hill. The hill was
sometimes called either Tremont or Trimountain. This view could have been true
regarding the contractor. During 1795 in timber-rich New England, when no
longer
used, the relatively expensive timber rails would have been expended in some
immediate construction project of then booming Boston. During a time before
railroads in America, entrepreneurs would not have stored timber rails out in
the weather for ten years, awaiting the beginnings of an unforeseen Railway
Age.
The lines of 1795 and of 1805, descended from it, provided British models for
the transfer of railroad engineering, to influential Boston, "the hub" of
America. —Frederick C. Gamst [from the R&LHS Newsgroup,
reproduced
by permission of the author, numbered citations not provided.]

Tracking
early travelers. Does the CPRR Museum have historical records
from which it would be possible to track journeys by particular individuals,
say in the fall of 1869 from Ogden west to Sacramento? I'm doing a chronology
of the American landscape painter Gilbert Munger and I know he made this
journey. Knowing exactly which dates and with which stops would be very
useful.— Mike
Schroeder
The
CPRR.org FAQ's page links to newspaper and
manuscript
collections where such information, if
it survived, could possibly be
located. For the period of July 26, 1870 - April 23, 1873, check the two volume
book, Railway
Passenger Lists of overland trains to San Francisco and the West by Louis
J. Rasmussen. There also were a few organized excursions such as the excursion
of travel agents made just after the line
was
completed
with
souvenir
books that list the participants, the Boston
Board of Trade's Boston-San Francisco Trans-Continental Excursion of June-July
1870 (complete with on-board newspaper!), the Frank
Leslie excursion in 1877-78 that he wrote about in his newspaper, or other
individual accounts.
If you are really lucky, you might discover letters written by Gilbert
Munger describing his trip that were saved by his descendents or deposited
in a library. Using the resources linked on our FAQ's page, you might
want to do a search to see if there is any listed manuscript collection
relating to him. To get an idea of what the transcontinental train travel was
really like, the best printed source is the recent book:"RIDING THE
TRANSCONTINENTAL
RAILS: OVERLAND TRAVEL ON THE PACIFIC RAILROAD,
1865
- 1881."Who
was the first president to ride a train?
John Quincy Adams. On November 8, 1833, former President
J.Q. Adams was a passenger on a Camden
& Amboy RR train which suffered the world's first recorded railway
accident and first fatalities. It happened at Heightstown, New Jersey,
when the 24-passenger train derailed owing to a broken axle. — Bruce
CooperWhere
can I find a map showing the location of the transcontinental rail line
in relation to today's roads. Such a map would be useful when trying to
spot remnants of the line while driving along the route?
For modern highly detailed maps covering the entire route, the best
choice would be the United States Geological Survey's topographic maps
(contour maps) which are widely available on paper, but now are also available
on the Internet for free from two companies which are both linked at the
bottom of the map list on the CPRR.org website's Transcontinental Railroad
Map
page. These can be used with a Global Positioning Satellite receiver
(which are now available quite inexpensively) to locate yourself readily
and with great accuracy even in the absence of clear landmarks. Also
see the recent government report
that includes contour maps of the entire route from Sacramento to the California-Nevada
border.

> Thomas Rubarth remarks that from his reading that the CPRR first started
building boats with the El Capitan at constructed as specified by
the CPRR at Oakland Point in 1868. This passenger ferry was followed
by three train ferries [see timetable], the Thoroughfare (1871), Transit (1876)
and the Solano (1879). Then came the passenger ferry Piedmont (1883).
These were also specified by the CPRR. The CPRR also modified and rebuilt some
existing ferries, such as the Chrysopolis, which was converted to
the double-ended Oakland in
1875.

... in the late 1940's - ...
Sparks was the division point between the Sacramento and Salt Lake Divisions
and there was always lots of activity. SP's cab-ahead Articulated Consolidations
operated west from Sparks over Donner Pass to Roseville, California ... Trains
over Donner were handled by SP's 4200 series AC's with an occasional 4100. ...
East from Sparks the passenger trains were handled by 4400 GS locos (4-8-4) or
4300 series 4-8-2's. Freights were generally
handled by 2-10-2's, 2-8-2 or 2-8-0's although 4300's frequently handled refer
blocks during the perishable rush. There were a couple of neat looking 4-6-0's,
one of which was assigned to the local freight/mixed to Fallon. ...
—Jim Harker,
Renton, WashingtonWhat
books
about the history of U.S. railroads are available in the German language?
1. An old, but valuable source, and one that is probably impossible to find,
is
by Wilhelm Hoff and Felix Schwabach, Official German Report on American Railroads,
Their Administrative and Economic Policy (New York: Germania Press, 1906). This
447-page book is more an administrative reference work than something one would
sit down and read. Still, it’s worth looking at if your correspondent has access
to a good university library. The Stanford call number is 385.0973 H 697a, and
the book is available through interlibrary loan.
2. One of the most interesting German works on American railroads is Peter Friedrich
Kupka’s Die Verkehrsmittel in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika (Leipzig:
Verlag von Duncker & Humblot, 1883). I don’t think this has been translated
into English. Also, see Kupka’s Amerikanische Eisenbahnen (Wien: Lehmann & Wentzel,
1877).
3. Probably the best title I can refer you to in terms of interest, readability,
and availability is Nicolaus Mohr’s Ein Striefzug durch den Nordwesten Amerikas.
This work was translated into English as Excursion through America (Chicago:
Lakeside Press, 1973). It was edited by Ray Allen Billington and is readily available;
AbeBooks has several copies listed for sale. —Norman
E. TutorowI
have bought items on eBay where the packing
was so bad I couldn't believe it. The worst was the package made
from a pizza box with sauce on it, padded with bread wrappers (I'm not
kidding). It made it, but I didn't want lunch. Again thanks.
— BruceMy
wife and I are buying the 125 year old home that was attached to the historical
and famous "Golconda Hot Springs Hotel and Baths" in Golconda, Nevada.
This was a stopping point for the railroad in the 1864 and later.
We are in the process of researching info and also are searching grants
based on historical conservation. The water tower that
fed the steam engines still stands across the street from our project.
Any Suggestions. —Bo & Lisa
Bennett, Golconda Hot Springs Guest House, Golconda,
NevadaWere
the
"Big Four" San Francisco Hotels built by the CPRR founders?[The Fairmont at 950 Mason St.; The Huntington
Hotel & Nob Hill
Spa, 1075 California St.; The InterContinental
Mark Hopkins, 999 California St.;
and, The Stanford Court
Renaissance Hotel, 905 California St., San Francisco.]
While three of the four "Big Four" hotels on Nob
Hill in San Francisco carry
the names of members of the CPRR's "Big Four" (The Stanford, The Mark Hopkins,
and The Huntington), none of these gentlemen ever built a hotel on Nob Hill. Leland
Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker instead each built great private
mansions there
in the 1870's while in 1892 Collis P. Huntington acquired the existing (but
long closed) mansion originally built by General David D. Colton,
a railroad lawyer, who had died in 1878. (Ironically after his death, Colton's
widow filed a suit against Stanford, Crocker, and Huntington who claimed that
Colton had defrauded the railroad. This bitter litigation was finally settled
in 1886.) When Huntington died in1900 his wife, Arabella, continued to occupy
the mansion until it was destroyed with the other three in the earthquake and
fire of 1906.
In 1915, Mrs. Huntington donated the still vacant land to the City of San Francisco
to remain in perpetuity as a park which it still is today. The Huntington Hotel
is actually across California Street from the park on a site once occupied by
the Tobin family mansion, the founders of the Hibernia Bank. The Crocker mansion
was located across Taylor Street to the West of the Colton/Huntington mansion
on what is now the site of Grace Cathedral. (See the
Muybridge San Francisco Panorama.)
The Stanford Hotel is indeed located on the site once occupied by the Stanford
Mansion and next to the Mark Hopkins which stands on the site of the Hopkins
mansion, but like the others neither of these original buildings was ever a
hotel. (Hopkins never lived in the mansion, however, as he died in 1878 shortly
before it was completed and the building became the Hopkins Art Institute.) The
Fairmont, which began construction in 1902, was built by members of the family
of James Fair whose mansion was located a couple of blocks west on Pine Street,
and was purchased by the Law brothers shortly before it was scheduled to open
in 1906. Neither the site or the hotel has any particular relation to the "Big
Four."
If you have an interest in other San Francisco hotels, see the CPRR Museum webpage
on the Palace
Hotel. —Bruce C. CooperThe
"Antelope," designated the engine for pulling Leland Stanford's car to
Promontory reportedly struck a log while exiting tunnel 15 and was ultimately
replaced by the 'Jupiter' for that historic occasion. Any idea where
that accident occurred, what county it was in, and how one can find that
spot? What an awesome website. — Lee Adams, III, Downieville,
California
The first person description of the accident involving Stanford's train
is in the Overland Monthly Magazine article "The
Last Tie."
Railtown
1897 is in James Town, California, near Sonora. It is the roundhouse
and shops of the Sierra Railroad. It is now a state park as of about 1980
and operated by the California State Railroad Museum as of 1995.
Are
there any sources of information (including photos) of the 1969 "Golden
Spike Centennial Limited" excursion that celebrated the 100th anniversary
of the driving of the golden spike?
The CPRR Museum does not have any photographs of the Golden Spike Centennial
Limited, but several can be found on the web.
Does
"C. & P. R. R." refer to the Central Pacific Railroad?
No. The following railroads may have been abbreviated C&PRR:

Also the Central
Pennsylvania Railroad and Chelatch Prairie
Railroad may have been abbreviated
CPRR.
Why
does your website have so many links? Don't links to other websites cause people
to leave your website?
The essence of the World Wide Web which has made it such a spectacularly successful
innovation is the inclusion of hyperlinks from page to page to make information
instantly accessible, regardless of the source. Limiting external hyperlinks
to
a
separate reference section or links page seems to defeat
much of the advantage
of Tim
Berners-Lee's invention. The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History
Museum website has tens of thousands of links, with a substantial fraction going
to other websites. We have linked
to every other source of related information that we have found on the
Internet
based on our understanding
of Metcalfe's Law which implies that the
usefulness and success of a website goes up approximately as the square of the
number of hyperlinked connections with
other related websites, and we believe that this accounts for the CPRR Museum
website consistently being ranked
first among transcontinental railroad websites
by Google, and other search engines.
We are convinced that the more a website helps people find other valuable resources
on the Internet, the more likely they
are to consider the site valuable and to return to it.I'm
doing a research paper on the transcontinental railroad and I found that
when I was looking for information about this topic I found good sites
but when I sat down to write my paper I wasn't sure how to write it in
my own words because I didn't totally understand and comprehend the information.
Is there any web site or anything that would help me to go about writing
my paper?
Learning to write well requires both lots of practice and the help
of a skilled writer willing to be a mentor. Jot down your ideas –
make some notes. What are you trying to say? Narrow it down
since you can't write about everything, and organize your ideas so you
have a rough idea how to structure your paper. Then write a rough
draft, correct it as best you can, and read it – sentence by sentence –
to your mentor who will dictate corrections to you. Over time, you
will internalize how your mentor corrects and helps you to rewrite your
sentences, substitute words, and rephrase your ideas, making this rewrite
less and less painful until after a few years you will be able to correct
and rewrite your prose all by yourself. One last tip: When
you have finished writing a draft, print it out on paper, wait a day and
then proofread it to find errors and awkward sentences that you would miss
on the computer screen.
This
old 5 1/2" spike is claimed to have come from the "U.S. Transcontinental
Railroad." Do you have a guess as to the age. Is this a hand forged
iron spike? Do you know what the markings on the head mean?

This is known as a "Dog Head" spike. If you look at the head of the
spike, the tapered front looks like a dogs nose and the two rounded side
lugs appear like a dogs ears - hence the name. I have several of these
spikes that were found on the Pacific Coast Narrow Gauge RR here in San
Luis Obispo County that are identical in appearance except they are
different lengths. One is 4 1/2 " long but has the largest head. One is
5" long and the head is somewhat smaller. I am sure the reason for the
shorter spikes was that they were used on 40 & 45 lb rail which was
substantially smaller than the 56 to 66 lb rail laid on the Pacific Railroad.
There are no markings on the head of any of the four I have. My spikes
are known to have been made in Wales and are known to be supplied with
English rail, some rolled in Wales and some in England. They date from
about the early 1880's. As no English rail was used on the Pacific
Railroad, by either the CP or the UP it is extremely doubtful that English
spikes were used. These spikes are not hand forged. I suspect that the
markings on the head may have been the identifying mark for the Mill where
they were forged. Because this spike is 5 1/2" long it compares with the
heavier spikes that were laid on the Central Pacific and more than likely
were used on heavy rail. It may well have been laid on one of the two transcontinental
railroads built across the northern routes, the Great Northern or the Canadian
Pacific. The age of the spike and the time of construction of the northern
routes coincide and the fact that neither of the northern routes were required
by law to only use American rail I am sure they probably used a lot of
English rail and spikes. One way or another it is my gut feeling
that your spike is quite scarce as a variety used in the US. James
M. Joyce in his monograph "Railroad
Spikes, A Collectors Guide" pub. by the author in 1985 states that
"The origin of the dog spike lies rich in the history of European railroading
at least back to the 1870's. In contrast, dogs have been used only occasionally
on American railroads." Joyce shows a drawing of a Dog Spike closely resembling
the above spike and identifies it as having been used on the Maryland and
Pennsylvania Railroad, no date given. James Joyce's study was quite
extensive and was a scholarly one that would be an asset to any railroad
fans library. —Ed Strobridge

Saw
the Longines Wittnauer Sterling silver coin "Driving the Golden Spike."
Are these coins collectible and do you know their approximate value?
While we are unable to appraise "collectibles,"
we can tell you that a number of the various "joining of the rails" commemorative
coins/medallions are auctioned weekly on eBay
where they often can be found by searching for "transcontinental railroad."
These are not antiques, but can be attractive novelty items that have been
manufactured as souvenirs and often sell in approximately the $10 range.

Gasconade
River Bridge Wreck. Looking for information concerning
the train
wreck that
occurred at the Gasconade River Bridge in the 1800s. A
train load of dignitaries from St. Louis was traveling to Jefferson City
to have dinner with the Governor. Supposedly there had been a hurried
up competition of the bridge. There were a number of people killed.
The engine still is under water in the river. The existing bridge
(which is over a hundred years old) is scheduled for replacement. Would
like to request one of the old stone piers be left as a monument to those who
died, but need more information ... —
Bob AuBuchon

> Ray State describes the Gasconade River Bridge Wreck as follows: Nov
1st 1855 on the Missouri Pacific 22 killed
and 50 injured. Bridge unfinished and RR decided to take risk with train. A
number of politicians killed.
... Both Robert C Reed in Train
Wrecks, Bonanza Books 1960 and Robert Shaw in
Down Brakes McMillan 1961 make reference.

What
can membership societies do to remain viable in the face of declining aging membership?
Existing societies with aging membership seem to be having a difficult time adapting
to the content and economic realities of the internet because they need a significant
number of members to support publication budgets of many thousands of dollars
a year. Older members are used to paper journals and newsletters which are expensive
to print and inaccessible to most of their potential audience, while younger
people (and the increasingly large numbers of technically savy seniors) now access
information
quite
differently.
Since
you
can
answer
most
questions on any topic no matter how esoteric for free in a matter of seconds
using Google,
journal content that is kept offline might as well not exist for an increasing
proportion of the population. However lamentable this may be, it is a reality
that must be recognized. There is, of course, a huge amount of valuable historical
information that is not yet on-line. But it is sufficiently inaccessible and
poorly indexed, and the content that is already available provides most of what
most people want, that they don't really have the patience to care about journals
and libraries.
If a society wants to remain viable with younger individuals and the technically
adept,
they
need to dramatically decrease their costs while putting all of their content
on a
website
where it
can be indexed by search engines and instantly accessed for free. This is quite
feasible if labor is provided by volunteers who own computers and scanners because
the cost of internet publication is negligible and rapidly dropping.
We hope that existing societies can make this transition to the internet and
not simply fade away with all their accumulated knowledge and content being lost
to posterity and that they won't make the common mistake of trying to support
their older publication methods by keeping their content inaccessible or for
members only, thereby making themselves invisible to their potential future membership.

What are some negative effects of the Transcontinental Railroad?
Overall the transcontinental railroad was a hugely positive success for the reasons
explained in the FAQ about the railroad's significance.
There
were, however, some negative aspects that were unfortunate, and others that
may
be positive or negative, depending on your value judgments:

The completion of the transcontinental railroad dramatically
decreased the cost of transportation and many commodities that could now
be readily obtained
and carried to the west coast. This was ultimately extremely beneficial,
but caused enormous economic disruption in the short run as west coast producers
had difficulty in adjusting in the face of the new competition.

The first
transcontinental railroad and the subsequently built rail lines may have
been constructed well in advance of adequate demand for their services because
the railroad
was
needed as a prerequisite to the population increased needed to make the railroads
financially viable. The expectation of commerce from Europe to the Orient
via the transcontinental railroad never materialized because the Suez canal
was
completed in the same year. The result was financial failure of the railroads
leading to
bankruptcies and reorganizations. Ultimately, however, both the entrepreneurs
who built the transcontinental railroad and the government did extremely
well, as can be judged by the mansions, and the enormous economic return
to the
United States due to reduced transportation charges to the government which
continued
until cancelled by Congress in the 1940's after the government saved
more than a billion dollars, more than eight times the value of the land
grants.

For example, the railroad building
boom left firms overextended and was one of the causes of the Panic
of 1873.

Wilderness was turned into
suburbia.

The railroads became enormously powerful both economically and politically,
and used their power in ways that became resented by the populace who felt
that
they
were
being
overcharged (even though transportation prices were dramatically lowered
by the presence
of the railroads). The rise of big businesses (the railroads were the first)
which had sufficient power to attempt anti-competitive behavior (which is
never successful in the long run because of the enormous incentives created
for
others to profit by innovating and by members of a cartel to profit by
cheating on
price fixing arrangements) but lead to anti-monopoly laws and government
regulation (exemplified by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which
like all such regulators rapidly evolves by being co-opted by the regulated
into serving the interests of the regulated by preventing competitors
from entering their markets), an approach which became widely adopted and
harmed
industrial
growth
causing
us to be
less
rich today
that
we otherwise
could
have been.
(The
stupidity
of this approach is illustrated by the conviction of the Aluminum
Company of America as a monopoly
for the crime of innovating so effectively that they
kept dropping the prices they charged for aluminum so fast over a period
of decades that others couldn't keep up!)

The settlement
of the west and the military conflict between the Union Pacific
Railroad and the Plains Indians was enormously
detrimental to the native
population and resulted in the buffalo herds
being almost entirely destroyed.

Contrary
to one hilarious report, the American
West remained an arid region and the population boom in south-western states
in consequence of the transcontinental railroads presents a continuing problem
of supplying sufficient water.

"To know that we know what we know, and
that to know we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge"—Confucius

"The greatest obstacle to
discovery is not ignorance – it
is the illusion of knowledge"—Daniel
J. Boorstin

How
reliable is this site? [actual question received]
"Reliable?" – The "truth" isn't easy to come by! You
asked, so we will tell you that we certainly think that the CPRR Museum website
has
reliable information – but you shouldn't believe anything that you read
without obtaining verification from other trusted sources. The writings on the
CPRR Museum
website do not have a single author, and reliability is variable both among and
within sources. Consequently, you need to make the evaluation of reliability
for yourself, rather than by asking us. You could also look
at what other people
say about our website, including expert historians (but, of course, then
you
might have to trust that we quote the comments that we receive accurately).
In an effort to get the history correct, this website has large quantities of
primary source information, in the form of pictures,
documents, articles,
and
maps. Bringing together a wide variety
of sources
from many contributors, the reliability will naturally differ from source
to
source and so you really need
to evaluate each item on its own merits. For example, a photograph captures the
moment, but is selective as to when, where, and what was chosen to be photographed – so
what does it mean to say that it is reliable or unreliable? If the ravages of
age which have degraded a picture are repaired,
does that make the result
more or less reliable?
When you ask for reliability, do you mean that the information can be verified,
and if so how? We do our best to accurately reproduce the part of the historical
record to which we have access,
but
we know that it is incomplete, and we do not necessarily always believe that
events occurred exactly as portrayed in the available historical records.
See, for example: Fiction
or Fact, and the Legend of Cape Horn.
We can only know what someone wrote or photographed at the time, or remembered
later, or spoke about, leaving a record. Perhaps comparing what one person wrote
to what another person wrote will let you have more confidence, at least if both
were first hand observers and their accounts agree. But, for example, the reports
of the driving of the last spike were probably written and possibly filed with
the newspapers before the events took place. The date shown on the golden last
spike is wrong – there was a two day delay:

"Misconceptions surrounding the Ceremony started in the newspapers of the
time. Due to the press of the crowd May 10, not one member of the press saw
the Ceremony, and many reporters had actually written their special 'eyewitness'
accounts days before the Golden Spike Ceremony was even planned. The only
information
the reporters had was that some sort of celebration was to take place May
8, near Promontory Point (the only place marked on their maps), and that
Central
Pacific President Leland Stanford was bringing a gold spike."

The history,
no doubt, would be
remembered differently if the experiences of the illiterate had been recorded.
As you know, two people in the same room who interact can often come away with
very different ideas of what happened. So asking whether a person's account
that survives over more than a century is what actually happened (or accurately
describes
even the small part of the overall event that the person observed) is often
impossible to answer, because there is nobody else to ask, and no ability to
cross examine
the witness from the distant past.
People who believe what they read in the newspaper or see on the 11 o'clock
news, or view in documentaries, likely have an incorrect or greatly distorted
idea
of what is happening even today.
See, two current examples: a "documentary," and It's
Getting
Better All the Time.
Then, as now, people have agendas that cause them to be less than truthful,
and to be selective in a way that leaves a false impression, or perhaps they
misunderstood
events themselves. For example, we can show what was written in the newspaper or
stated in Senate
testimony, but how can anyone know if the people were knowledgeable
and truthful at the time? For example, there is a solitary, widely quoted newspaper
story about 1,200 Chinese CPRR construction workers
who died that makes no sense
to us in the context of all the other available very specific reports of few
casualties. Is this single report mistaken, or
perhaps could this represent a misinterpretation of the result of a
smallpox outbreak being later falsely attributed to construction accidents?
What you can be sure of is that if a more recent author makes up a story
that
is not based on any historical record, the resulting information ("history")
is fiction – which unfortunately often happens. While it not our primary
purpose,
the CPRR.org website attempts to point out various myths, legends,
and errors.(Additionally, when you ask us if we are reliable, instead
of deciding for yourself, you
are setting up some rather formidable
logical difficulties. If we answer,
yes,
we
are reliable, you
still don't know whether the answer you received is reliable. If we answer
no, we are not reliable, you can be certain that you know nothing additional
about our reliability
because logically you must ignore our unreliable answer.)

HOMEWORK
AND HISTORY DAY QUESTIONS:

To
Whom it May Concern:Hi, I am in the fourth grade in Bakersfield, California.
I am working on a history day project. The theme this year is Turning Points
in history. I have chosen the topic of the Transcontinental Railroad
and how it effected the United States. History day focuses on primary
sources and the importance of the topic. Would you please answer
a few questions for me? Thank you very much for your time.

What changes were caused by the building of the Transcontinental Railroad?

What changes made the building of the Transcontinental Railroad possible?

What happened to the workers, especially the Chinese workers after the
Railroad was finished?

How did the Transcontinental Railroad influence the events and atmosphere
of the time period?

How did the events and atmosphere of the time period influence the railroad?

How did the railroad help territories become states?

How were the Native Americans effected by the railroad?

Do you know of any sites where I could find primary documents relating
to the railroad?

Do you know anyone that I can interview about the railroad and how it
still is important?

Thanks for your questions. You have certainly chosen a fascinating
topic for your history day project.
See:

"Primary Sources: The most basic definition of a primary
source is: that which is written or produced
in the time period students are investigating.
Primary sources are materials directly
related to a topic by time or participation.
These materials include letters, speeches,
diaries, newspaper articles from the time,
oral history interviews, documents,
photographs, artifacts, or anything else that
provides first-hand accounts about a person
or event. This definition also applies to
primary sources found on the Internet.
A letter written by President Lincoln in
1862 is a primary source for a student
researching the Civil War era. A newspaper
article about the Battle of Gettysburg
written by a contemporary in July 1863
would be a primary source; but an article
about the battle written in June 2001
probably was not written by an eyewitness
or participant and would not be a primary
source. The memories of a person who took
part in the battle also can serve as a
primary source. He was an eyewitness to
and a participant in this historical event at
the time. However, an interview with an
expert (a professor of Civil War history, for
example) is not a primary source UNLESS
that expert actually lived through and has
first-hand knowledge of the events being
described (Highly unlikely for a Civil War
historian!).

Primary materials, such as quotes from
historical figures and photographs of historical
events, can be retrieved from secondary
quotation, selecting it from the original
sources and used effectively in History Day
projects. However, these are not considered
primary sources. Check out the “Research
Roadmap” on the National History Day Website at
www.nationalhistoryday.org
for additional help on primary sources.

Secondary Sources: Secondary sources are usually published
books or articles by authors who were
not eyewitnesses or participants in the
historical event or period and who base
their interpretation on primary sources,
research, and study. These sources provide
context for a historical event. For example,
high school history textbooks and other
history books about a particular topic are
secondary sources. So are biographies,
newspaper retrospectives, and reference
books such as encyclopedias. This definition
also applies to secondary sources found
on the Internet."

1) My history teacher wants my class to do a Utah related topic, and
the only info I can find is about the Chinese in California.
The reason that you are finding limited information about Chinese
railroad workers in Utah is that most of the railroad construction in
Utah was done by Mormon contractors instead
of
Chinese.
But
Chinese workers definitely were present in Utah, for example during the record
ten mile day and at the ceremony at Promontory (and
are pictured in the famous "Last
Spike" painting).
2) How do I know my information is historically accurate?
A lot of people question some of the info that I got and say that
that never happened or it isn't true. I don't know
which side to believe.
You tell by knowing where the information came from. If it came from someone
that saw it themselves and wrote about it at the time, and it agrees with other
such accounts, and your read their original account,
it's probably accurate (these
are called "primary sources"). But if
someone who was not there to see it themselves first wrote about it much later
and they can't prove how they know what they
are saying (by quoting primary sources), maybe they just made it up (or are just
repeating what someone else who doesn't know made
up and wrote in a book).
3) How can I place my topic in historical context?
4) Do
you have any ideas on how I can make a posterboard for my project,
I don't have enough money to get a big one.
Perhaps you could find a large cardboard box (for free at a local store or market)
that you could flatten and use the clean inside part for your poster.

These are the notes that never
end.
Yes, they go on and on, my friends.
I started studying them, not knowing what they were,
and I'll continue studying them forever just because ...

All use of this website and
any related activity, including browsing and sending us messages,
is governed by the CPRR.org User
Agreement – so you should read the terms and conditions
carefully because you are bound by them.

Acknowledgment: The CPRR Museum thanks the participants
in the CPRR
Discussion Group for their assistance in responding to
questions.